THE CIRCUS 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 
AND FUGITIVE PIECES 



JOYCE KILMER 



Uniform with this Volume 



Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays 
and Letters 

Edited with a Memoir by 
ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDA.Y 

Volume One: 

memoir and poems 

Volume Two: 

prose works 



THE CIRCUS 

AND OTHER ESSAYS 
AND FUGITIVE PIECES 



BY 

JOYCE KILMER 

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY 



NEW 




Sr YORK 



GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1921, 
By George H. Doran Company 






(~ 



CopjTight, 1916, by Laurence J. Gromme 



Printed in the Uniteu) States of America. 



0)CI.A6.U815 



> 



TO 

ALINE KILMER 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Credit is gratefully accorded the New York 
Times, America, Contemporary Verse, and Poetry: 
A Magazine of Verse, for permission to reprint 
several of the pieces collected in this volume. 
For the privilege of reprinting poems quoted by 
Kilmer in his articles and lectures, acknowledgment- 
is made to the following pubUshers : E. P. Dutton 
& Company, Dodd, Mead and Company, Charles 
Scribner's Sons, John Lane Company, The Mac- 
millan Company, Methuen and Company, Boni 
and Liveright, and Burns and Oates. And the per- 
mission of George Sterling is greatly appreciated 
for the right to reproduce his three sonnets on 
Oblivion. The article on Thomas Hardy, pre- 
pared as the Introduction to the Modern Library 
Edition of "The jMayor of Casterbridge," is re- 
produced by special arrangement with Boni and 
Liveright. The publishers of "Warner's Library 
of the World's Best Literature" have courteously 



VI 11 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



extended permission to reprint here the four 
essays, originally written for that work, which con- 
clude this volume. 

R. C. H. 

New York, 1921. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Intkoduction by Robert Coetes Holliday 13 

THE CIRCUS, AND OTHER ESSAYS 

The Circus 45 

The Abolition of Poets 60 

NooN-Houa Adventuring 70 

Signs and Symbols 83 

The Great Nickel Adventure 88 

The Urban Chanticleer 96 

Daily Traveling 105 

Incongruous New York 110 

In Memoriam : John Bunny 116 

The Day After Christmas 125 

FUGITIVE PIECES 

The Ashman 137 

The Bear That Walks Like a Man 146 

Absinthe at the Cheshire Cheese 153 

Japanese Lacquer 159 

Sappho Rediviva 168 

The Poetry of Gerard Hopkins 180 

Philosophical Tendencies in English Literature 186 
Two Lectures on English Poetry: 

The Ballad 197 

The Sonnet . 203 

Gilbert K. Chesterton and His Poetry 222 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Lionel Johnson, Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beards- 
ley 237 

Swinburne and Francis Thompson 253 

A Note on Thomas Hardy , 268 

Madison Julius Cawein. 275 

Francis Thompson 282 

John Masefield 288 

William Vaughn Moody 302 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 



SINCE last I took up my pen in the service of 
my friend who on July 30, 1918, laid down his 
sword in the service of his country, fame, and yet 
greater fame, has been busy with his name. Any 
further eulogy by my hand would have only the 
point of being altogether superfluous and the fool- 
ish effect of being very much at the rear of the sit- 
uation. Further, the story of Joyce Kilmer, doubt- 
less in very fair measure, is known to nearly every- 
one. An account of his career is not to be appre- 
ciably elaborated here. 

There are, however, some facts in explanation of 
the appearance of this volume at this time which 
require to be set down. And a number of circum- 
stances in relation to the materia-l here collected 
may be told, I think, to general interest. With 
these matters I am probably as familiar as anyone, 
and so have the great privilege of undertaking to 
record them. 

[13] 



INTRODUCTION 

The ten highly humorous and altogether charm- 
ing essays which form the first part of this volume 
have led a rather queer life so far — though I think 
their existence will be a very happy one from now 
on. First, they were not "essays" at the time of 
their birth. They came into the world as "articles." 
So they were spoken of by the young journalist 
who at various times and with very little to do 
about the matter wrote them in the course of a 
bewildering variety of other activities. Or, to be 
still more frank, he was perhaps more apt to refer 
to them, when he did refer to them at all, as "Sun- 
day stories," done as a part of his job with the New 
York Times Sunday Magazine. What they were 
called, however, is neither here nor there. The 
thing is that they are here. 

At the time they were offered for book pubhca- 
tion their author, then about thirty years of age, 
was well established as the author of "Trees and 
Other Poems" — poems which had been appearing 
for some time in various publications, collected and 
issued in book form in 1914. He had been for 
several years a conspicuous figure and an inval- 
uable worker in the Poetry Society of America and 
the Dickens Fellowship. He was a member of the 
Authors Club, and several other organizations. He 
[14] 



INTRODUCTION 

had been a lexicographer and an associate magazine 
editor. He was a "star" book reviewer, conducted 
the Poetry Department of The Literary Digest, 
associated much with literary celebrities, and ap- 
peared in Who's Who. The point I am getting at 
is that he had a good deal of what is called a 
"name." 

Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do. I sup- 
pose that is why the thought occurred to Joyce to 
get out a book of prose. So, as the professional 
literary term has it, he "pasted up" ten of his 
articles — that is, cut them out of the newspaper and 
stuck them column width down the middle of sheets 
of "copy" paper. He typed a title page, "The 
Circus and Other Essays," and submitted his 
manuscript to a publisher. It was promptly 
"turned down." Joyce again did up his manuscript, 
gummed on some fresh stamps, and again away it 
went to another leading publishing house. And — 
well, and so on. I do not know precisely how many 
times this manuscript was submitted for publica- 
tion ; but I know it was a number, a good number, 
of times. 

That, however, "The Circus" seemed likely not 
to find any publisher at all at that time is not 
a matter for anything like astonishment. Not 

[15] 



INTRODUCTION 

when one bears in mind a publishing hobgoblin of 
the day. The book was labeled "essays" and there- 
fore damned. And here, perhaps, it may not be 
too irrelevant to take a brief glance at the whole 
history of this mysterious thing, the light, familiar 
essay in English. In the Augustan age of English 
prose, we remember, appeared the easy, graceful 
style of Steele and Addison, so admirably suited to 
the pleasant narrative form of essay which they in- 
troduced. And in the nineteenth century in Eng- 
land, when Johnson and Goldsmith were followed 
by Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, Ma- 
caulay, Carlyle, Ruskin and all the rest, the essay 
certainly appears to have been, so to say, very 
much the go. 

Irving, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Lowell, 
Holmes — certainly our fathers were not afraid of 
essays. Nevertheless, somewhere about the open- 
ing of our own day an iron-bound tradition became 
erected in the publishing business, at least in the 
United States, that books of essays would not sell; 
could not be made to sell even sufficiently to avoid 
a considerable loss on the investment of manufac- 
ture; in fact, were quite impossible as a publishing 
venture. No matter how much a publisher him- 
self, or his manuscript reader, might enjoy a col- 
[16] 



INTRODUCTION 

lection of essays that chanced to turn up in his 
shop, his conviction as to its unmarketabihty as a 
book was not altered — not even stirred. A few, a 
very few, essayists there were, indeed, who got pub- 
lished. Agnes Repplier and Samuel McChord 
Crothers most prominent, perhaps, among them. 
But these writers had somehow got established as 
essayists. They were found on the lists only of a 
house with peculiarly "literary" traditions, which 
it was business policy to capitalize and perpetuate 
for the sake of the firm's "imprint." I have heard 
scoffers among publishers ask if "anybody outside 
of New England" bought the books of these writ- 
ers. Maybe their prime function was, in the pub- 
lishing term, to "dress the list." The volumes of 
essays by Dr. Henry van Dyke, I know from ex- 
perience as a bookseller, sold in popular measure. 
And now and then a volume of collected papers 
by, say, Meredith Nicholson would bob up for a 
short space of time. But such instances as these 
did not affect the general situation. 

In general, when the manuscript of "The Circus" 
was "going the rounds" it was (supposedly) eco- 
nomic madness, at any rate professional heresy, not 
to regard books of essays as what the trade terms 
"plugs," and a drug on the market. Doubtless, 

[17] 



INTRODUCTION 

the publishing position in this matter was evolved 
from cumulative facts of experience in the past. 
But a screw was loose somewhere. The publishing 
barometer had, it would seem, failed to note a 
change in the weather of the public mind. 

That "The Circus" would not have made a fair- 
ly popular book at the time it was first submitted 
for publication, it seems to me, there is a good deal 
of reason to believe was a fallacy. Not a couple of 
years afterward a collection of random articles in 
general character not dissimilar to "The Circus," 
by another young man of greatly likable nature, 
but then practically unknown outside the circle of 
his personal friends, was in some idiosyncratic 
moment accepted, and directly won its way to a 
very considerable sale and a very fair degree of 
fame. About then, too, along came another book 
of pastcd-up "papers" (about which I happen to 
know a good deal), which after having been re- 
jected by nearly every publishing house in America 
was taken in a spirit of generous friendliness by a 
publisher of much enterprise, began almost at once 
to sell as well as a fairly successful novel, has been 
numerous times reprinted, and in the way of luck 
brought its altogether obscure author something of 
a name. And just now the light, personal, journal- 
[18] 



- INTRODUCTION 

istic-literary essay is having quite a brisk vogue. 

If Joyce stood to-day merely where he stood five 
years ago "The Circus," without doubt, would be 
snapped up by anybody. More; some publisher's 
"scout" very likely would get a "hunch" about the 
probability of Joyce's having sufficient material in 
his scrap-book for such a volume and "go after" it 
even before Joyce had submitted it to the house of 
this fellow's connection. But, alas! for "ifs" and 
"might have beens." Fair fortune did not attend 
"The Circus." 

Failing of placing the book with any large house 
having an extensive and organized machinery for 
carrying it to a wide audience, Joyce welcomed the 
opportunity of having the book published by his 
friend Laurence J. Gomme. Mr. Gomme had been 
for several years the proprietor of the Little Book 
Shop Around the Corner, at number two East 
Twenty-ninth Street, directly across the street 
from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the 
Transfiguration, so altogether charming in its Old 
World effect, nestling in a tiny green spot hemmed 
in by high buildings, and known to fame and legend 
as the Little Church Around the Corner. This 
was a shop conducted in excellent taste, a sort of 
salon for pleasant persons of literary breeding, and 

[191 



INTRODUCTION 

its "circulars" were written by no less an advertis- 
ing man than Richard Le Gallienne. In addition 
to selling the best books of other publishers, Mr. 
Gomme (at a good deal of risk to himself) served 
the cause of good literature by himself issuing now 
and then a volume of a nature close to his heart. 

In the autumn of 1916 he published, in a very 
attractive form, the American edition of Mr. Bel- 
loc's poems. The volume was entitled "Verses," by 
Hilaire Belloc. The introduction to the book by 
Kilmer was reprinted in the two volume set, "Joyce 
Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters," under the 
title "The Poetry of Hilaire Belloc." That same 
fall Mt. Gomme pubhshed "The Circus and Other 
Essays." He made a charming little book: a thin 
volume in size betwixt and between what the book 
trade calls a "16mo" volume and a duodecimo; 
bound in plain tan boards, with ohve cloth back 
stamped in gold ; very neatly printed on soft cream 
paper in rather small type. The book had a rather 
fantastically amusing and somewhat lurid "jacket," 
picturing in black and yellow the professional ac- 
tivities of several clowns. 

A very pleasant bibelot, but, I felt then, not a 
volume effective in catching the popular trade. 
For one thing, it looked very much like it might 
[20] 



^ INTRODUCTION 

be a book of verse. Also, the book was so thin that 
one would not be likely to catch sight of it standing 
among other volumes in a row on a bookstore 
shelf. 

Mr. Gomme's means as a publisher at that time 
did not permit him to give the book any paid ad- 
vertising; it had no campaign whatever of free pub- 
licity behind it. Nor had the publisher any travel- 
ing salesmen to show the book to dealers over the 
country. He merely "covered" New York City 
himself in the interests of the volumes he issued. 
Indeed, one would not be making a hilarious exag- 
geration in saying that "The Circus" was semi- 
"privately printed." 

A fair number of copies of the book were sent 
out for review. And here is a very interesting 
thing. The book, as has been said, was decidedly 
insignificant in bulk. It was published at a time 
when the assumption prevailed that there was no 
appreciable public for volumes of essays ; and con- 
sequently, the inference would be, the publication 
of such a book was quite without news value. Fur- 
ther, it was issued at a period when newsprint paper 
was appallingly scarce, newspaper space rigorously 
conserved, and the war engrossing public attention. 
There was, too, as we have seen, nothing about the 

[21] 



INTRODUCTION 

launching of "The Circus" to tempt any literary- 
editor or reviewer to believe that the book was of 
any consequence whatever. Indeed, half a "stick" 
of fairly favorable comment here and there would 
have been all that anybody could reasonably have 
expected in the way of a "press." But, as a mat- 
ter of fact, all in all the book got a surprising 
amount of space in the papers, and was awarded 
the dignity of thoughtful appreciation. The New 
York Evening Post devoted half the front page of 
its book review section to an article, which was con- 
tinued through a column of another page, to "The 
Circus" and another book of essays with which it 
was grouped. 

Shortly after the publication of "The Circus" the 
difficulties of the business of bookselling and pub- 
lishing at this time forced Mr. Gomme to close out 
his business. And for a period his affairs were 
very much involved. His stock in hand was scat- 
tered, and before long his recent publications be- 
came exceedingly difficult to obtain. A couple of 
years after the date of its imprint, Mr. Belloc, in 
the course of correspondence which I had with him 
mainly relating to other matters, repeatedly be- 
sought me to obtain for him a copy of his "Verses," 
the volume containing Kilmer's introduction. In- 
[22] 



INTRODUCTION 

deed, he was apparently much put out by the fact 
that, as he expressed it, he had never even seen a 
copy of the American edition of his poems. I had 
more than a little difficulty in finding a copy to 
send to him. This he never received. With some 
petulance he laid its loss to the German submarines, 
which he declared sank everything that was being 
sent to him. I found the trail to another copy of 
"Verses" still more elusive; and, to tell the truth, 
I really don't know whether or not I got another 
copy ojfF to him. This story is to show that anyone 
who has a copy of that book now has a volume far 
from readily found. 

Copies of the original edition of "The Circus" 
are somewhat easier to lay hold of. Doubt- 
less, though, they will soon be scarce, as the 
original edition could not have been large. And 
the book will not be reprinted in its first form. 
With all the untoward circumstances of its publica- 
tion, however, "The Circus" did seem to find its 
way to no mean circle of friends. When the me- 
morial volumes, "Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays 
and Letters," were published in the autumn of 
1918, numerous inquiries were received by the pub- 
lishers as to why the essays which comprised the 
volume "The Circus" were not included. The ex- 

[23] 



INTRODUCTION 

planation is this: In the continuance of the en- 
tanglement of the affairs of Mr. Gofnme's former 
business no clear title to the rights of this book 
was at that time in sight. Since then these mat- 
ters have all been straightened out, and, I am 
happy to be able to say, this excellent friend of 
Joyce Kilmer is again in circumstances more aus- 
picious than before, and with joy to his fine heart, 
effectively serving the cause of good books. 

In direct critical appreciation of these ten essays 
there is not much that I care to say. They were 
written by my friend, and are therefore holy. That 
is, of course, to me. They may be charged with 
being very youthful. Aye; even so. 

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 
For ever panting and for ever young. 

Their youthfulness is to me a thing of very poign- 
ant, tender beauty. I see again that radiant boy, 
trailing clouds of glory come from God who was 
his home. His childhood spent in "a town less than 
a hundred miles from New York," "now he feels 
himself actually a New Yorker," "enjoys the proud 
novelty of working for wages," and "joyfully, 
therefore, he goes forth every noon to explore the 
[24] 



INTRODUCTION 

territory of his new possession." The subway was 
to him "the great nickel adventure"; a ride on the 
elevated railroad, "aerial journeying"; his alarm 
clock, "the urban chanticleer." Again, as a com- 
muter, I see him on the 5.24, flying across "leagues" 
to his cottage in the "primeval forest" of New Jer- 
sey. On his "red velvet chair" he sits, "enjoying 
with his neighbors tobacco smoke, rapid travel, and 
the news of the world." None ever enjoyed these 
things more, red velvet chair and all! 

The connection which I may boast of having 
with the writing of some of these essays illustrates 
in an amusing way the pleasantly pugnacious char- 
acter of Joyce's mind. Joyce held that I was of- 
fensively eesthetic in regarding sign-boards about 
the countryside as ugly things. "Signs and Sym- 
bols" was his hilarious and scornful rebuke. "The 
Gentle Art of Christmas Giving" (a New York 
Times article reprinted in the two-volume set) had 
a similar origin. You remember with what amus- 
ing gusto it begins: 

If a dentist stuck a bit of holly in his cap and 
went through the streets on Christmas morning, his 
buzzing drill over his shoulder and his forceps in 
his hand, stopping at the houses of his friends to 
give their jaws free treatment, meanwhile trolling 

[25] 



INTRODUCTION 

out lusty Yuletide staves — if he were to do this, 
I say, it would be said of him, among other things, 
that he was celebrating Christmas in a highly orig- 
inal manner. Undoubtedly there would be many 
other ad j ectives applied to his manner of generosity 
— adjectives applied, for instance, by the children 
whom, around their gayly festooned tree, he sur- 
prised with his gift of expert treatment. But the 
adjective most generally used (not perhaps in adu- 
lation) would be "original." And the use of this 
adjective would be utterly wrong. 

The holly-bedecked dentist would not be acting 
in the original manner. He would be following the 
suggestion of his own philanthropic heart. He 
would be acting in accordance with tradition, a par- 
ticularly annoying tradition, the evil and absurd 
superstition that a gift should be representative of 
the giver rather than of the recipient. 

That "particularly annoying tradition," that "evil 
and absurd superstition," I had been guilty of voic- 
ing a few days before he wrote this article. He 
looked at me with withering commiseration. 

If, in the days when he was writing the essays 
of "The Circus," Joyce had the effect of being 
ridiculously young, he was also (with affection I 
say it) ridiculously wise for his years. I can hear 
the sturdy sound of his voice in the phrase (in the 
essay "The Abolition of Poets"), "those ridiculous 
[26] 



INTRODUCTION 

young people who call themselves Imagists and 
Vorticists and sunilar queer names." And what 
joyous satu'e here: 

And there is Zipp, the What-is-it? most vener- 
able of freaks, whose browless tufted head and 
amazing figure have entertained his visitors since 
Phineas Taylor Barnum engaged him to ornament 
his museum on Ann Street. For all I know, Zipp 
is a poet — ^liis smile is lyrical, and in his roving eyes 
there is a suggestion of vers libre. 

Then, with the mellow humor of paternal experi- 
ence he discusses (in "The Day After Christmas") 
that hypothetical person who is three, and who, he 
regrets to say, is "somewhat sticky"; who, further, 
had in all confidence requested Santa Claus to 
bring him a large live baboon, but who had been 
brought instead a small tin monkey on a stick. Or, 
again, babies who at somewhere between six and 
eight in the morning, "seeing that their weary par- 
ents are leaving them, decide at last that it is time 
to go to sleep." 

And even then, as throughout his later years, he 
had that (manly not sentimental) intuitive sym- 
pathy for those by fortune afflicted. In "The 
Circus": 

[27] 



INTRODUCTION 

The freaks get large salaries (they seem large to 
poets), and they are carefully tended, for they are 
delicate. See, here is a man who lives although his 
back is broken. There is a crowd around him; how 
interested they are! Would they be as interested 
in a poet who lived although his heart was broken? 
Probably not. But then, there are not many 
freaks. 

Nor did his perception of sorrow come to him solely 
by intuition. Far from it. No, this very valiant 
and very young man himself had experienced the 
fact that an alarm clock "can utter harsh and 
strident grief, those know who lie down with Sor- 
row and must awaken with her." 

To me there is something indescribably touch- 
ing even in Joyce's most hilariouf-: flights of fancy 
in these essays. I cannot tell you why this is so. 
Perhaps it is because his jocund humor, like all 
else, sprang from a heart so woven of the common 
strands of humanity. 

When Adam watched with pleased astonishment 
an agile monkey leap among the branches of an 
Eden tree, and laughed at the foolish face of a 
giraffe, he saw a circus. Delightedly now would he 
sit upon a rickety chair beneath a canvas roof, smell 
the romantic aroma of elephant and trampled 
grass, and look at wonders. 
£28] 



INTRODUCTION 

The most obvious thing, of course, about these 
essays is their Chestertonian spirit and manner. In 
the matter of the manner, Mr. Chesterton's trick of 
"reverse English," to employ the billiard player's 
term, take this: 

It would be the mere prose of our daily life for 
birds to fly about close to the tent's roof, and for 
men and women to ring bells and sit in rocking 
chairs. It is the poetry of the circus that men and 
women fly about close to the tent's roof, and birds 
ring bells and sit in rocking chairs. 

Or, for both manner and spirit, this: 

By faith the walls of Jericho fell down. By faith 
the Eight Algerian Aerial Equilibrists stayed up. 

Indeed, the whole fundamental temper of the book 
— its glorification (almost deification) of everyday 
things; its militant persistence in running counter 
to dull acceptance of current ideas; its sleight-of- 
hand dexterity in bringing a thing to life by stand- 
ing it on its head — is Chestertonian. And right 
there is the point. Anybody, almost, can copy, or 
parody, Mr. Chesterton's manner. But Kilmer's 
Chestertonism was nothing of a superficial imita- 
tion. He was at heart quite Chestertonian himself. 

[29] 



INTRODUCTION 

What is still more to the point : He was, so to put 
it, more Chestertonian than even Mr. Chesterton. 
That is, one cannot but feel that for some consid- 
erable time Mr. Chesterton has been more or less 
mechanically imitating himself. But Kilmer's rol- 
licking pages have on them the tender bloom of the 
natural fruit. 

And they reek with the articles of his creed — are 
punctuated with the touchstones by which he guided 
his life. Three words are most often repeated in 
these essays. They occur again and again, one or 
more of them on nearly every page. These words, 
you cannot fail to note, are: faith, mirth, and 
democracy. 

II 

The poem, "The Ashman," which opens the 
second part of this book, was not included in 
the collected set of Kilmer's poems, essays and let- 
ters for the reason that it was overlooked at the 
time those volumes were being prepared for pub- 
lication. The poem was supplied for this volume 
by Charles Wharton Stork, in whose magazine, 
"Contemporary Verse," it originally appeared. 

Among Kilmer's papers I have found a type- 
v/ritten memorandum which shows that he contem- 
[30] 



INTRODUCTION 

plated collecting into a volume the fugitive pieces 
here reprinted. This is the memorandum: 

LITERARY ADVENTURES 

(1) Absinthe at The Cheshire Cheese; a considera- 

tion of Ernest Dowson and his times. 
(America pasted up — Times Book Review 
to be obtained) 

(2) Japanese Lacquer; an attempt to solve the 

Lafcadio Hearn riddle (pasted up) 

(3) Sappho Rediviva (pasted up) 

(4) Rabindranath Tagore and the Neo-Mys- 
, TICS (pasted up) 

(5) The Bex\r That Walks Like a Man; Some 

aspects of the Russian novel fad (pasted 
up) 

(6) Francis Thompson (pasted up) 
(7) 

I do not know that anything especial need be said 
concerning these articles. They are exceedingly 
lively bits of journalistic literary criticism, highly 
entertaining in their exhibition of Kilmer's pet aver- 
sions, which, after all, sprang from his manly com- 
mon sense. In a letter written at about the time of 
these articles Joyce says: "My chief pleasure in 
writing is to attempt to expose the absurdity of 
very modern writers — materialists, feminists, Zola- 
ists and all the rest of the foolish crew." 

[31] 



INTRODUCTION 

As interesting examples of Kilmerana, several 
representative lectures conclude this book. At the 
time Joyce entered the army his lecturing activities 
had become pretty extensive. He makes frequent 
reference to his lecture work in his correspondence 
of the time. In a letter written in September, 
1915, he says, "I can't make a spring tour — be- 
cause in February or March we're going to have 
another baby, I'm glad to say." Further on in this 
same communication, to the Reverend James J. 
Daly, S. J., he writes: "You see, I don't want to 
go into lecturing on so extensive a scale as Dr. 
Walsh. I have my regular work to attend to, and 
I'd rather not take more than three weeks off at a 
time. And I don't want to lecture too often. I 
have not Dr. Walsh's readiness. I prepare my lec- 
tures carefully, writing them out like essays, and 
memorizing them so thoroughly that they give, I 
believe, the impression that they are spoken ex- 
tempore." In another letter of about this time he 
speaks of his "new profession" — "monologue artist 
in one night stands." In one letter he speaks of a 
lecture, manuscript of which I have been unable to 
find, as follows: 

The lecture which I especially desire to give at 
Campion this year is "The Poet of the Pre- 
[32] 



INTRODUCTION 

Raphaelite Brotherhood and Their Successors." 
This is, I think, a better lecture than "Swinburne 
and Francis Thompson." It is an attempt to show 
how Patmore (who was a member of the Pre-Raph- 
aelite Brotherhood, a friend of Rossetti and a con- 
tributor to The Germ) carried the theories of the 
Pre-Raphaelites to their logical conclusion, that 
Rossetti and Christina and Morris and a lot of that 
bunch really paved the way for Francis Thompson 
and Alice Meynell and Katherine Tynan and other 
modern Catholic poets, by writing sympathetically, 
even if not always understandingly, on Catholic 
themes. Incidentally, I trace "The Hound of 
Heaven" back through "The Blessed Damozel" to 
"The Raven." But if you don't want that lecture 
I'll lecture on any other subject you may elect — 
the lighter lyrics of James J. Daly, for example. 

In another letter he writes: "Next year I won't 
lecture at all; I'll just recite my poems, which take 
better than the lectures, anyway. I'm going on 
tour with Ellis Parker Butler, the 'Pigs Is Pigs' 
man, and we'll have a regular manager." 

And again: 

I am glad that you are so forgiving as to be 
willing to have me at Campion on the twenty-sixth. 
Unless I am commanded to the contrary, I will 
give "The War and the Poets" at the College and 

[33] 



INTRODUCTION 

"Francis Thompson" at the Convent. "The War 
and the Poets" does not get the goats of hyphen- 
ates of any sort — I gave it in Toronto and in Notre 
Dame. Also I will read some of my own stuff, 
new and old, at both of these lectures unless forc- 
ibly prevented. 

The two lectures on poetry, "The Ballad" and 
"The Sormet," were given at New York Univer- 
sity, and were to have been parts of a book on the 
art of versification, which the University, I be- 
lieve, was to publish. In the manuscript of these 
lectures we find such phrases as "this book," and 
Joyce referring to himself here as "the author of a 
textbook." The lecture "The Ballad" as here 
printed is incomplete, as the typewritten copy of 
the manuscript which came into my hands, and 
which is the only copy I know to be in existence, 
ends thus: 

I will call the reader's attention to the work of 
some of the poets who, in our time, have been prov- 
ing the falsity of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's state- 
ment that 

These lectures on poetry are admirably adapted 
to their end. They are addressed to the student, 
especially "the apprentices of the craft of verse 
[34] 



INTRODUCTION 

making." They are devoted altogether to historical 
and technical matters. And in the earnestness of 
his conception of his task here as the author of a 
textbook, Joyce has very rigorously excluded any- 
thing which could possibly be fancied as flippant. 
Just as sternly has he refrained from allowing to 
enter his discourse any particle of color of religious 
bias. He has not, however, in the slightest per- 
mitted his independence of judgment to be subdued 
in his interpretation of purely literary points. So 
these lectures do not lack for vitality, and exhibit 
again, in a less known manner of his writing, his 
exceptional clarity of style. 

As in his life, so in his writings. Joyce moved in 
many circles, and though always quite himself, so 
did he, too, always fit where he found himself. An 
exceedingly active professional writer, he was called 
upon to write for various audiences. When he was 
entrusted with writing the articles on Madison 
Cawein, Francis Thompson, John Masefield, and 
William Vaughn Moody for "Warner's Library 
of the World's Best Literature," and when he was 
invited to contribute the introductory essay to 
Thomas Hardy's novel "The Mayor of Caster- 
bridge" in "The Modem Library," he was to ad- 
dress a more or less popular audience of general 

, [35] 



INTRODUCTION 

character, and he did that with ability and dis- 
tinguished hterary tact. 

Naturally, Joyce became much in demand as a 
speaker before purely Catholic audiences. And 
naturally before Roman Catholic schools, colleges, 
universities and societies he loosed the spirit of his 
own fervent Catholicism. Perhaps it will occur to 
some readers of this volume who may not be Cath- 
olics that such lectures as "Lionel Johnson, Ernest 
Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley" and "Swinburne and 
Francis Thompson" are more in the nature of briefs 
for the Catholic Faith than they are of the charac- 
ter of disinterested literary criticism. I do not 
think it would have worried Joyce to have been told 
so. He was in such lectures talking what was to 
him far more than literature. In a letter of his be- 
fore me, written by hand, he says, "There are in 
the universe only two ecstasies. One is receiving 
Hoty Communion." The other, he means, is his 
love for his wife. "Poetry," he continues, "is not 
an ecstasy, but it is a delight, a shadow and an echo 
of the tw^o ecstasies. It certainly is a delight to 
read and to make." 

What, to his mind, was the use of writers, any- 
way? In the lecture "Philosophical Tendencies in 
[36] 



INTRODUCTION 

English Literature" he tells very definitely his con- 
viction as to this: 

So writers may fulfill the purpose for which they 
were made by writing — may know God better by 
writing about Him, increase their love of Him by 
expressing it in beautiful words, serve Him in this 
world by means of their best talent, and because of 
this service and His mercy be happy with Him for- 
ever in Heaven. 

Ill 

Numerous letters written by Joyce to many 
of his friends, and kindly loaned by their own- 
ers to the publishers, were received too late for in- 
clusion in the two-volume set of his poems, essays 
and letters. These letters continue in greater de- 
tail, and give the emphasis of cumulative effect, to 
the portrait of a beautiful and a joyous young man- 
hood revealed by the letters which were printed. 
A man has only one life to live in this world, but (if 
he is an}i:hing like Kilmer) many friends. And 
so it is that several groups of letters from his hand 
are more than apt to tell, with some variations in 
expression, very much the same story. Two stout 
volumes of collected letters sometimes are compiled 
as an appropriate part of the literary remains of a 

[37] 



INTRODUCTION 

notable life. Anything approaching such a bulk 
of preserved correspondence, however, can only be 
in order when that life has reflected something like 
three or four times the number of working years 
that were Kilmer's. 

Some few points I find in the unpublished letters 
which may be new to many of Joyce's readers. In 
one place he says, referring to the approaching 
publication of the volume which was issued as 
"Trees and Other Poems," "My Book is to appear 
next October. It is called 'The Twelve-forty-five 
and Other Poems.' " A little later he writes: 

I wish you'd suggest a name for my book. In 
my contract it is called "Trees and Other Poems" 
but I don't like that ; it's too mild. I wanted to call 
it "Delicatessen," since it contains a long poem of 
that name, but the publishers think that name too 
frivolous. Then I suggested "A Rumbling Wain" 
(after the third and fourth lines of the first stanza 
of Patmore's "Angel in the House") but that's too 
obscure. And "The 12.45 and Other Poems" is 
flat, I think. If you select a title, you see, you can't 
roast the title when you review the book in America! 

In another place: "I don't like the book's jacket 

at all. I think it is effeminate." 

[88] 



INTRODUCTION 

As an amusingly frank comment on his own 
"stuff" there is this: 

My article in was somewhat weak- 
minded. Have poor Christmas poem in 

and good Christmas poem ($50.00!!) in . 

And middling Thanksgiving poem in . 

And trite but amiable poem about English univer- 
sity at war in . 

Of Chesterton he has this very quotable line, "He 
is the plumed knight of literature with the s^/ord 
of wit and burnished shield of Faith." All about, 
of course, is the Kilmerian humor. He asks his 
wife to, "Remember me to your new young infant 
Christopher." He says to a friend, "I'm sending 
you some postcards. The person not Mike in the 
picture was Mike's mother." And again: 

Will you please tell me at your earliest conveni- 
ence the name of an asylum for blind orphans, or 
something of the sort, which wants picture-post- 
cards? I have a truckful of them, and there's no 
room in the house for them and us, and yet I don't 
want to throw them away. 

Occasionally he speaks of Rose, his little daugh- 
ter afflicted with infantile paralysis: "Rose is in 
good general health and spirits, thank God. She 

[39] 



INTRODUCTION 

can use one fore-arm a little. But I cannot talk 
much about her, except to Our Lady." Over and 
over again, he says (ridiculously enough), that he 
is much worried about his work, he is "disgustingly 
lazy." And always he asked his friends to pray for 
him. He speaks of Father Corbet: 

He ran the retreat last week. I got my soul 
scraped pretty clean, but it soils easily. 

Remember me to everyone, and please pray very 
hard for, 

Your affectionate friend. 

IV 

In the Memoir prefixed to the two-volume set are 
a couple of errors of fact. As a matter of rec- 
ord these should be corrected. The Memoir reads : 

Kilmer was graduated from Rutgers College in 
1904, and received his A.B. from Columbia in 
1906. . . . As a Sophomore Kilmer became en- 
gaged to Miss Aline Murray. . . . Upon leaving 
Columbia he . . . returned to New Jersey and be- 
gan his career as instructor of Latin at Morristown 
High School. . . . He married and became a 
householder. 

Kilmer never graduated from Rutgers College. 
He graduated from Rutgers Preparatory School 
[40] 



INTRODUCTION 

in 1904. He went to Rutgers College fo^- two 
years, finishing his Sophomore year. His Junior 
and Senior years were at Columbia University. 
He graduated from there in 1908. Two weeks 
after his graduation he married. 

The date of Kilmer's death has not been exactly 
established. The Memoir states, "Sergeant Kil- 
mer was killed in action near the Ourcq, July 30, 
1918." The date popularly accepted is Sunday, 
July 28. It was at the dawn of this day that the 
165th made its gallant and irresistible drive into 
the five days' battle which followed. The Govern- 
ment telegram to Joyce's widow gave the date of 
his death as August 1, as does also his death cer- 
tificate. His Citation for valor, however, names 
the date as July 30. 

At the time the Memoir was written Joyce was 
buried near where he had fallen, perhaps ten min- 
utes' walk to the south of the village of Seringes. 
Later his body was removed to a cemetery. This 
cemetery is 608 at Seringes et Nesles, in the Prov- 
ince of Aisne. It is within walking distance of a 
little village, Fere en Tardenois. The cemetery is 
a small one. It is described as being in a beauti- 
ful location, on a little elevation close by the road. 
The place is about ninety miles from Paris. 

[41] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 



THE CIRCUS 
I 

RESTRAINT is perhaps the most conspicuous 
literary virtue of the artists in words who 
have the pleasant task of describing in programs, 
in newspaper advertisements, and on posters the 
excellences of circuses. The litterateur who, pos- 
sessed of an intimate knowledge of the circus, 
merely calls it "a new, stupendous, dazzling, mag- 
nificent, spectacular, educational, and awe-inspir- 
ing conglomeration of marvels, mysteries, mirth, 
and magic," deserves praise for a verbal economy 
almost Greek. For he is not verbose and extrava- 
gant, he is taciturn and thrifty; he deliberately uses 
the mildest instead of the strongest of the ad- 
jectives at his disposal. 

Shyly, it seems, but in fact artfully, he uses mod- 
est terms — "new," for example, and "spectacular" 
and "educational." These are not necessarily 
words of praise. An epidemic may be new, an 
earthquake may be spectacular, and even a session 
of school may be educational. Yet the adjectives 

[45] 



THE emeus AND OTHER ESSAYS 

proper to these catastrophes are actually applied 
— in letters of gold and silver and purple — ^to the 
circus I 

The laureate of the circus, with an esthetic 
shrewdness which places him at once on a level with 
Walter Pater (whose description of the "Mona 
Lisa," by the by, is an admirable example of Circus 
press-agent writing) considers, and rejects as too 
bewilderingly true, the mightiest of the adjectives 
that fit his theme. Discreetly he calls it "new" in- 
stead of "immemorial"; "educational" instead of 
"religious." He does not, as he might, call the 
circus poetic, he does not call it aristocratic, he does 
not call it democratic. Yet all these great words 
are, as he well knows, his to use. The consciousness 
of his power makes him gentle. 

His abnegation becomes the more startlingly vir- 
tuous when it is considered that he resists the temp- 
tation to use that fascinating device, paradox. For 
the circus is paradox itself — ^this reactionary and 
futuristic exhibition, full of Roman chariots and 
motor cycles, of high romance and grotesque real- 
ism, this demonstration of democracy and aristoc- 
racy, equality and subordination, worldliness and 
religion. 

The press agent may, without fear of logical con- 
[46] 



THE CIRCUS 

tradiction, call the circus religious. In the old days, 
he frequently called it a "moral exhibition." This 
was to forestall or answer the attacks of the Puritan 
divines of New England, who railed against the 
great canvas monster which invaded the sanctity of 
their villages. 

"Moral" was justly used. For surely courage, 
patience, and industry are the three qualities most 
obviously exhibited by the silk-and-spangle clad 
men and women who dance on the perilous wire, fly 
through space on swiftly swinging bars, and teach 
a spaniel's tricks to the man-eating lion. 

But the religious value, the formally religious 
value, of the circus is even more obvious than its 
moral value. For the circus, more than any other 
secular institution on the face of the earth, exempli- 
fies — it may be said, flaunts — that virtue which is 
the very basis of religion, the virtue of faith. 

Now, faith is the acceptance of truth without 
proof. The man who is told and beheves that some- 
thing contrary to his experience will happen has 
faith. And he who considers the psychology of the 
audience at a circus, he who (there are scientists 
suflSciently egotistic) looks into his own soul while 
a troupe of aerial acrobats are before his physical 
eyes, will see faith, strong and splendid. 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

It is not (as some pessimists who never went to 
a circus would have us beheve) the expectation that 
the performer will fall and be dashed to pieces that 
makes people enjoy a dangerous act. People are 
like that only in the novels of D. H. Lawrence and 
the merry pastoral ballads of John Masefield. The 
circus audience gets its pleasure chiefly from its 
wholly illogical behef that the performer will not 
fall and be dashed to pieces ; that is, from the exer- 
cise of faith. The audience enjoys its irrational 
faith that JNIme. Dupin will safely accomplish the 
irrational feat of hanging by her teeth from a wire 
and supporting the weight of all the gold and pink 
persons who theoretically constitute her family. 
They enjoy the exercise of this faith, and they en- 
joy its justification. They really believe, just be- 
cause a particularly incredible-looking poster tells 
them so, that there are in the side-show a man with 
three legs, a woman nine feet tall, and a sword 
swallower. They give up their money gladly, not 
to iind that the poster was wrong, but because they 
have faith that it is right. There are no rational- 
ists at the circus. 

The audience has faith, and the performers — 
where would they be without it? — in small frag- 
ments, red and white on the tanbark floor. "If the 
[48] 



THE CIRCUS 

sun and moon should doubt," remarked William 
Blake, "they'd immediately go out." If the lady 
who rides the motor cycle around the interior of the 
hollow brass ball, or the gentleman who balances a 
pool table, two lighted lamps and a feather on his 
left ear should doubt, they would go out just as 
promptly. The Peerless Equestrienne believes that 
she will land on her feet on the cantering white 
horse's broad rosined back after that double cart- 
wheel. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down. 
By faith the Eight Algerian Aerial Equilibrists 
stayed up. 

You may, of course, try this on your son. As he 
absorbs the strawed grape juice (degenerate sub- 
stitute for the pink lemonade of antiquity I), 
munches the sibilant popcorn and the peanuts which 
the elephants declined, you may pour into his ears 
this disquisition on the religiosity of the greatest 
show on earth. In fact, the best time to preach to 
a child is while he is staring, with eyes as round 
as the balloons he is soon to acquire, at the splendors 
of the three rings. For then there is not the slight- 
est chance of his answering you back, or hearing 
you. 

They are modern enough for anyone, these wan- 
dering players. The gymnasts are at home on mo- 

[49] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tor cycles, the clowns sport with burlesque aero- 
planes. Yet they are wholesomely reactionary in 
other respects than those of having chariot races 
and such unaging feats of skill and strength as may 
have cheered the hearts of Caesar's legionaries. 
They are reactionary in that they turn man's new- 
est triumphs into toys. The motor cycle loses its 
dignity and is no longer an imposing proof of the 
truth of materialistic philosophy when a girl, built, 
it seems, of Dresden china, rides it on one wheel 
over hurdles and through a hoop of flame. And 
see ! Yorick himself, with his old painted grin and 
suit of motley, makes a Bleriot the butt of infinite 
jest. 

The circus is vulgar. Its enemies say so; its 
friends, with grateful hearts assent. It is vulgar^ 
of the crowd. To no play upon the stage can this 
lofty praise be given. For the circus as it is to-day 
would thrill and amuse and delight not only the 
crowd that to-day see it, but the crowd that might 
come from the days before the Flood, or from the 
days of our great-grandchildren's children. When 
Adam watched with pleased astonishment an agile 
monkey leap among the branches of an Eden tree, 
and laughed at the foolish face of a giraffe, he saw 
a circus. Delightedly now would he sit upon a 
[50] 



THE CIRCUS 

rickety chair beneath a canvas roof, smell the ro- 
mantic aroma of elephant and trampled grass, and 
look at wonders. 

So it is that the vulgarity of the appeal of the 
circus — its democracy, if you prefer — has no tem- 
poral or geographic limits. And the performers 
themselves are a democracy — ^the acrobat who som- 
ersaults before death's eyes, the accomplished horse- 
man, the amazing contortionist, the graceful jug- 
gler — all these are made equal by the ring, and, 
furthermore, they must compete for the applause 
of the throng with roller-skating bears, trained 
seals, and chalk-faced clowns. Yet there is aristoc- 
racy of the ring, and the subordination that Dr. 
Johnson praised. For here struts the ringmaster, 
with cracking whip, imperious voice, and marvelous 
evening clothes; the pageant with which the great 
show opened had its crowned queen; and even 
every troop of performing beasts has its four- 
footed leader. 

The stage's glories have been sung by many a 
poet. But the circus has had no laureate ; it has had 
to content itself with the passionate prose of its 
press agent. The loss is poetry's, not the circus's. 
For the circus is itself a poem and a poet — a poem 
in that it is a lovely and enduring expression of the 

[51] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

soul of man, his mirth, and his romance, and a poet 
in that it is a maker, a creator of splendid fancies 
in the minds of those who see it. 

And there are poets in the circus. They are not, 
perhaps, the men and women who make their liv- 
ing by their skill and daring, risking their lives to 
entertain the world. These are not poets ; they are 
artists whose methods are purely objective. No, 
the subjective artists, the poets, are to be found in 
the ])asement, if the show is at the Garden, or, if 
the show be outside New York they are to be 
found in the little tents — the side-shows. This is 
not a mere sneer at the craft of poetry, a mere 
statement that poets are freaks. Poets are not 
freaks. But freaks are poets. 

Rossetti said it. "Of tliine own tears," he wrote, 
"thy song must tears beget. O singer, magic mir- 
ror hast thou none, save thine own manifest heart." 
Behold, therefore, the man on whom a crushing mis- 
fortune has come. He puts his grief into fair words, 
and shows it to the public. Thereby he gets money 
and fame. Behold, therefore, a man whom mis- 
fortune touched before his birth, and dwarfed him, 
made him a ridiculous image of humanity. He 
shows his misfortune to the public and gets money 
and fame thereby. This man exhibits his lack of 
[52] 



THE CIRCUS 

faith in a sonnet-sequence; that man exhibits his 
lack of bones in a tent. This poet shows a soul 
scarred by the cruel whips of injustice; this man a 
back scarred by the tattooer's needles. 

But the freaks would not like to change places 
with the poets. The freaks get large salaries (they 
seem large to poets) , and they are carefully tended, 
for they are delicate. See, here is a man who lives 
although his back is broken. There is a crowd 
around him ; how interested they are ! Would they 
be as interested in a poet who lived although his 
heart was broken? Probably not. But then, 
there are not many freaks. 

II 

When Tom Gradgrind (who had, you re- 
member, robbed the Coketown Bank, and been 
saved from punishment by the amiable inter- 
vention of Sleary's Circus) was living out his exile 
somewhere in South America, he often longed, 
Charles Dickens tells us in the engaging tale called 
"Hard Times," to be back in England with his 
sister. But what phase of his dismal boyhood and 
wasted later years did he see in his homesick 
dreams? What episodes of his hfe in England did 
it give him pleasure to relive in memory? 

[53] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Dickens does not tell us. But no one who has 
read "Hard Times" and seen a circus needs to be 
told. The repentant exile, toiling under the tropic 
sun, had no affectionate recollections of Stone 
Lodge, his father's dreary mansion in Coketown, 
with its metallurgical cabinet, its conchological cab- 
inet, and its miner alogical cabinet. Nor was it with 
anything approaching happiness that he thought of 
the Coketown Bank, the scene of some years of 
dull labor and of one moment of moral catastrophe. 

He remembered, we may be sure, two things. 
He remembered appearing, with blackened face, an 
immense waistcoat, knee breeches, buckled shoes, 
and a mad cocked hat, as one of the comic servants 
of Jack the Giant-Killer at a certain Grand Morn- 
ing Performance of Sleary's Circus. At the time 
he had been a fugitive from justice, but not even 
his fear and shame could keep his heart from stir- 
ring as he smelled the exhilarating odor of tanbark, 
trampled grass, and horses, heard the blare of the 
band, saw the glaring lights and the encircling tiers 
of applauding people, and knew that he — he, Tom 
Gradgrind, the oppressed, the crushed, the scien- 
tifically educated — was really and truly a circus 
performer! 

And the other recollections, which, after the lapse 
[54] 



THE CIRCUS 

of many years, still made his keart beat more 
quickly, had to do with a gap in the pavilion in 
which Sleary's Circus once held forth in a suburb 
of Coketown — a gap through which young Tom 
Gradgrind delightedly beheld the "graceful eques- 
trian Tyrolean flower-act" of Miss Josephine 
Sleary, and strained his astonished young eyes to 
watch Signore Jupe (none other than Sissy's 
father) "elucidate the diverting accomplishments 
of his highly trained performing dog Merrylegs." 

And the reason why Sleary's Circus played so 
glorious a part in the memory of this broken exile 
was that it had brought into his most prosaic life 
all the poetry that he had ever known. Surrounded 
with facts, crammed with facts, educated and gov- 
erned according to a mechanical system which was 
an extraordinary foreshadowing of our modern "ef- 
ficiency," he was allowed two visits to an enchanted 
realm, two draughts of the wine of wizardry. 
Twice in his life he was mysteriously in communion 
with poetry. 

There has been much talk recently about a re- 
nascence of poetry, and people have become excited 
over the fact that so many thousands of copies of 
Edgar Lee Masters' book have been sold, and so 
many more thousands of copies of the late Rupert 

[55] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Brooke's Collected Poems. This is all very pleas- 
ant, but it doesn't mean that there has been a re- 
birth of poetry. Poetry cannot be reborn, for po- 
etry has never died. 

The circus draws us by the thousands to watch 
"desperately dangerous displays of unrivaled aeri- 
alism," and "the acme of expert equitation and ac- 
robatic horsemanship" beneath the Diana-guarded 
roof of ^ladison Square Garden; even so it drew 
our fathers and their fathers before them to rick- 
ety wooden benches propped against great sway- 
ing canvas walls, in the days when Robinson and 
Lake displayed the wonders of the world in glori- 
ous rivalry with Hemings, Cooper and Whitby. 
Even so will the circus llourish in the days to come, 
when aeroplanes are cheaper than motor cars, and 
the war that began in August, 1914, is but a thing 
of dates and names in dusty textbooks. For poetry 
is immortal. And the circus is poetry. 

What is the function of poetry? Is it not to 
blend the real and the ideal, to touch the common- 
place with lovely dyes of fancy, to tell us (accord- 
ing to Edwin xVrling'ton Robinson), through a 
more or less emotional reaction, something that can- 
not be said ? And is not this exactly what the circus 
does ? ^lost of its charm is due to the fact that all 
[56] 



THE CIRCUS 

its wonders are in some way connected with our 
ordinary life. The elephant in his enclosure at the 
Zoological Gardens is merely a marvel; when he 
dances the tango or plays the comet he allies him- 
self with our experience, takes on a whimsical hu- 
manity, and thus becomes more marvelous. The 
elephant in the Zoo is an exhibit ; the elephant tan- 
going in the tanbark ring is poetrJ^ 

And there is Zipp, the What-is-it? most vener- 
able of freaks, whose browless tufted head and 
amazing figure have entertained his visitors since 
Phineas Taylor Bamum engaged him to orna- 
ment his museum on Ann Street. For all I know, 
Zipp is a poet — his smile is lyrical, and in his roving 
eyes there is a suggestion of vers libre. But at any 
rate, Zipp is a poem — a particularly charming 
poem when, in the procession of freaks which opens 
the performance, he gallantly leads round the arena 
that fantastically microcephalous young woman 
known to fame as the Aztec Queen. The Bearded 
Lady and the Snake Charmer and the Sword Swal- 
lower are poems — poems in the later manner of 
Thomas Hardy. And that dehghtfuUy diminutive 
chocolate-colored person who rejoices in the name 
of the Princess Wee- Wee — with her, in her dainty 

[57] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

little golden-spangled gown, what lyric of Walter 
Savage Landor can compare? 

It is the splendor of incongruity that gives the 
equestrian and aerial feats of the arena their charm, 
that incongruity which is the soul of romance. The 
creatures we see are the creatures we know, but 
they have most poetically changed places. It would 
be the mere prose of our daily life for birds to fly 
about close to the tent's roof, and for men and 
women to ring bells and sit in rocking chairs. It 
is the poetry of the circus that men and women fly 
about close to the tent's roof, and birds ring bells 
and sit in rocking chairs. 

No one can describe a circus in prose. The in- 
dustrious press agent of the circus long ago gave 
up the attempt, and resorted to impressionistic free 
verse, characterized by an ecstasy of alliteration. 
No one can adequately describe the involved contor- 
tions, swings, and dashes of a "family" of silk-clad 
adventurers on the flying trapeze. No faithful nar- 
rative of the grotesque buffetings of the chalk-faced 
clowns is in itself amusing — and yet the antics of 
these agile mimes have always been, will always be, 
irresistibly mirth- compelling. The magic of the 
circus is compounded of so many things — ^move- 
ment, sound, light, color, odor — ^that it can never 
[58] 



THE CIRCUS 

be put into words. It is absurd to attempt to re- 
flect it in prose, and it cannot be reflected in poetry 
because it is itself poetry ; it is the greatest poem in 
the world. 

And just as Sleary's Circus was the cup of poetry 
which benevolent fate held twice to the parched lips 
of young Thomas Gradgrind's soul, so is the circus 
of our day, with its regiment of clowns, its roller- 
skating bears and dancing elephants, its radiant 
men and women who pirouette on horseback and 
dart above our heads like swallows, a most whole- 
some and invigorating tonic for a weary and pro- 
saic generation. We who every morning at the 
breakfast table read of war and desolation need 
to cheer our hearts with the burlesque battles of 
the clowns ; we who ride in the subway need to exult 
when the charioteer, with streaming toga, guides his 
six white horses on their thunderous course; we 
whose eyes are daily on our ledgers and sales rec- 
ords need to lift them, if not to the stars, at least 
to the perilous wire on which a graceful pedestrian 
gayly flirts with death. We whose lives are prose 
may well be grateful for the circus, our annual 
draught of poetry; for the circus, the perennial, 
irresistible, incomparable, inevitable Renascence of 
Wonder. 

[59] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

EVER since certain vivacious Frenchmen put 
on funny little red nightcaps and remarked 
"Qa ira!" the inevitability of a reform has been 
the chief article of its propaganda. The Socialist 
orator says: "Socialism is coming upon us with 
the speed of the whirlwind and the sureness of the 
dawn." Therefore he mounts a soap-box and pas- 
sionately urges six small boys, the town drunkard 
and a policeman to accelerate the whirlwind and 
encourage the dawn in its commendable habit of 
punctuality. The suffragist tells us: "The Votes 
for Women movement, like a mighty ocean, will 
break down the barriers of prejudice and flood the 
country." Therefore, like a perverted Mrs. Part- 
ington, she runs out with her little broom to help 
the ocean along. And so, humbly following these 
illustrious precedents, I advocate the abolition of 
poets because poets are rapidly aboHshing them- 
selves. 

For one thing, they have given up the uniform. 
In the old days it was easy to recognize them. 
[60] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

They wore velvet jackets and sombreros, they let 
their hair hang over their shoulders, they were also, 
I believe, picturesquely ragged. When you saw 
M. Paul Verlaine in his great cloak, drinking ab- 
sinthe at a table on the boulevard, you recognized 
him as a poet. But when you see Mr. Clinton Scol- 
lard in his decorous cutaway drinking a milk shake 
in a drug store, how are you to guess his profession? 

Of course, there are people who look like poets. 
When your literary inclined maiden aunt from 
West Swansey, New Hampshire (by a sacred con- 
vention all maiden aunts are literarily inclined), 
visits New York, you take her to a restaurant which 
is supposed to be bohemian because it is near Wash- 
ington Square. The macaroni is buoyantly elastic, 
the lettuce is wilted, the chicken tough, the wine a 
blend of acetic acid and aniline. But your aunt 
enjoys it, and she is vastly interested in the com- 
pany. 

She hunts for poets. "There!" she exclaims. 
"There is a poet! What is his name?" And she 
points to a romantic-looking youth with great mop 
of hair, a soft-collared flannel shirt, and a large 
black necktie. 

You answer, wildly striving to keep your reputa- 
tion for omniscience : "That? Why, that's Alfred 

[61] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Noyes." Or "That's James Whitcomb Riley." 
Or "That's Henry van Dyke." Your aunt is pleas- 
antly thrilled, and she will entertain all West Swan- 
sey with the tale of this literary adventure. And 
you drown your lie in a beaker of acid claret. 

As a matter of fact, who is this big-necktied, 
long-haired person? Perhaps he is a cabaret per- 
former, and will presently give your aunt a novel 
insight into the habits of the literati by rising to 
sing with a lamentable air of gayety, "Funiculi, 
Funicula." Perhaps he is one of those earnest 
young men who have for their alma mater the dear 
old Ferrer School. But in all probability he is 
merely an innocent bystander who endeavors in 
his dress to commemorate a visit to East Aurora. 

The two great steps in the abolition of poets were 
the shearing of Mr. Richard Le Gallienne and the 
invention of East Aurora. When Mr. Le Galli- 
enne's hair waved, a black and curly banner, be- 
fore the literary legions of the world, then poets 
lived up to their traditional reputation; courage- 
ously they were picturesque. But when the fell 
scissors did their bi*utal work, then poets donned 
the garb of burgesses. 

And then the more adventurous burgesses began 
to dress like poets. Mr. Hubbard began the manu- 
[62] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

facture of large black neckties, and the Village 
Atheists all over America put them on. Everyone 
who had queer ideas about religion, economics, eth- 
ics or politics wore the necktie that had previously 
conjSned only lyric throats. Now when you see a 
man wearing two yards of black crepe in front of 
his collar, do not expect him to sing you a madri- 
gal. It is probable that his decoration signifies 
merely that he is opposed to vaccination. 

And when the poets took to wearing prosaic 
clothes, they took also to following prosaic occupa- 
tions. Is there now living a man who does nothing 
but write verse? I doubt that the most thorough 
explorer of contemporary letters could discover 
such an anachronism. Poets still write poetry, but 
the ancient art is no longer their chief excuse for 
existence. They come before the public in other 
and more commonplace guises. 

Mr. T. A. Daly was until recently business man- 
ager of a weekly paper. Messrs. Bliss Carman, 
Richard Le Gallienne, Ford Madox Hueffer, Nich- 
olas Vachell Lindsay, and eight thousand other 
poets write literary criticisms. Dr. Henry van 
Dyke preaches and is a diplomat. Mr. Rudyard 
Kipling preaches and is not a diplomat. All the 
poets have regular jobs. In the good old days it 

[63J 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

was different. Then Dr. Henry van Dyke, Mr. 

Tom Daly, and the rest of them would have done 
nothing all day and all night but write poetry and 
read it to each other as they sat and drank anisette 
or some other sweet, sticky cordial in a club named 
the Camembert Cheese, or something of the sort. 
They would have scorned editing anything less 
precious than The Germ or The Yellow Book. 
And as to writing book reviews — as well ask them 
to get married! 

For a time Mr. Alfred Noyes kept the spirit of 
craft-integrity. He alone, among book reviewing, 
story writing, magazine editing versifiers, was 
solely a poet. But now even he has taken up a 
side line. First he delivered the Lowell lectures; 
then he became a university professor. Over his 
laurel wreath he has put a mortar-board. 

But the departure of the poets from a strictly 
professional attitude toward life is only one side of 
the shield. The poets have become citizens ; that is 
bad enough. But also the citizens have become 
poets. They do not call themselves poets, they 
merely write verse as casually as they write letters. 

For one thing, the rhymed advertisement is more 
common now than ever before. Formerly, when 
the proprietor or advertising manager of a manu- 
[64] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

factory of automobiles or chewing gum or some 
other necessity of American life desired to celebrate 
his wares in verse, he went to some trouble and 
expense. He called in an impecunious literary 
man, that is, a literary man, and with some trepida- 
tion made what business men quaintly call a propo- 
sition. The poet considered the matter carefully, 
arranged the terms of payment, and insisted upon 
the exclusion of his name from the published com- 
position, was supplied with material descriptive of 
his subject, and departed to his conventional gar- 
ret. In the course of time he brought back the de- 
sired verses, was paid, and treated with mingled 
curiosity and awe by the men of affairs who had 
made use of his talents. 

'Now all is changed. The advertising managers 
started scabbing on the unorganized and individual- 
istic poets and actually drove them off the job. 
Now, when a cough drop is to be made the subject 
of a sonnet-sequence what happens? Does a reg- 
ular professional poet get a dollar a line for the 
work? He does not. The advertising manager 
sends the office boy out for a rhyming dictionary 
and writes the verses himself. Or else he lets the 
office boy write them. 

But this is only one manifestation of this lament- 

[65] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

able state of affairs. Another is the fact that most 
people are the authors of books of verse. People 
do not buy poetry, they do not read poetry, but 
they write it with amazing enthusiasm and industry. 
There are now at least four prosperous publishers 
who do nothing but bring out books at the expense 
of the authors, and their hsts contain practically 
nothing but volumes of verse. The country cler- 
gyman, lawyer, or school teacher who has not writ- 
ten a volume of verse and paid from $100 to $500 to 
have it printed (with his portrait as frontispiece) 
is a rare bird indeed. These people never buy 
books of verse, and, of course, almost no copies of 
their own books are sold. But the fact remains that 
nearly everybody who can read and write makes 
verse, carelessly, casually, without effort or emo- 
tion. The shoemaker who wishes to call the atten- 
tion of the public to his new stock of canvas shoes 
with green leather inserts lisps in numbers and the 
numbers come. And the man who has nothing to 
advertise but his own personality seizes authori- 
tatively upon the Muse's hair and pulls it until she 
shrieks his praise. 

It will be objected that what these people write 
is merely verse, not poetry; that no one considers 
them poets and that they do not claim the title. 
[66] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

But this is not a valid objection, it is thoroughly in 
accordance with my thesis. They write verse, and 
they are not poets ; therefore they — all people, that 
is — believe that one need not be a professional poet 
to write verse any more than one need be a profes- 
sional dishwasher to wash dishes. So poetry, as a 
distinct craft, utterly disappears; it does not even 
continue as a separate and special branch of un- 
skilled labor. 

Of course, there still exist people who take the 
making of verse somewhat seriously. But the loud- 
est of them, those who most earnestly insist upon 
the importance of themselves and their art, are 
those ridiculous young people who call themselves 
Imagistes and Vorticists and similar queer names. 
And they deliberately take from poetry its charac- 
teristics of rhyme and rhythm and apply the name 
poetry to little chunks of maudlin prose. So they, 
too, are working for the abolition of poets and 
poetry. 

There is an exquisite Socialist doctrine called 
"progressive poverty" or something of the sort, ac- 
cording to which we are to let conditions get worse 
and worse so that they may ultimately become un- 
bearable. Then, it is said, the cooperative common- 
wealth will almost automatically come into being. 

[67] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Perhaps this suggests a solution for the problem 
now under consideration. Let the few remaining 
professional poets resolutely abstain from writing 
verse; let verse be made only by patent medicine 
manufacturers and grocers and Imagistes and, in 
general, people totally ignorant of poetry. They 
will produce it in abundance; they will probably 
perfect some mechanical device, a poem- jenny, 
perhaps, which will produce a standard poem in a 
short time and gradually do away with the home- 
manufactured article. 

In the course of time the patents on this device 
will be taken over by the Standard Oil Company, 
and poems of uniform perfection will be furnished 
at small cost to every house or apartment. Then, 
after some twenty-five years, there will come a re- 
action, a sort of craftsman, back-to-nature move- 
ment. Some adventurous person will make up a 
real poem of his own, and his friends will say, 
"How quaint ! That is the way they did in the old 
days before the poem- jenny was invented. I rather 
like this poem. It has strength, simplicity, a primi- 
tive quality that I cannot find in the poems the 
Standard Oil Company sends up every week. Go 
on, Rollo, and see if you can make another one." 

Thus encouraged, Rollo will make another poem, 
[68] 



THE ABOLITION OF POETS 

and another, and rather histrionically will assume 
the picturesque old title of poet. Other poets will 
arise, and the Standard Oil Company will turn its 
attention to perfecting devices for the construction 
of novels. Poems made by hand by specialists will 
then be the only articles of the sort produced. In 
this way only can there ever be a genuine renascence 
of the ancient and honorable craft of poetry. 



[69] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

SUN worship, according to the latest religious 
census, is no longer a popular cult. This is a 
pity, for it was more respectable and more diverting 
than most of the forms of paganism that have su- 
perseded it. 

But the sun is a good-humored deity; he show- 
ered his gifts no more generously of old on Teheran, 
whose walls were resonant with his praise, than 
now on faithless New York. Daily from his merid- 
ian he stretches forth his shining scimitar and 
strikes the fetters from the feet of young men, 
setting them free to walk the golden streets of an 
enchanted city. 

The feet, I said, of young men. For men no 
longer young the noon hour is a time for the com- 
fortable but unromantic occupation of eating. The 
man who usually takes a car to get from Thirty- 
third Street to Times Square, who occasionally lets 
the barber rub tonic on the top of his head, who 
carries blocks and dolls home on Saturday, who is 
morbidly interested in building loans and grass- 
[70] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

seed, regards the noon hour as at worst a time for 
shopping and at best a time for eating. But to the 
young man, particularly to the young man for the 
first time a wage-earner in the city, the noon hour 
is a time for splendid adventuring. 

It may be that there are young women for whom 
the luncheon hour is a gay thread of romance in 
the dull fabric of the working day. Of this I 
cannot speak with certainty; my observation indi- 
cates that they regard it merely as an opportunity 
to go, in chattering companies, to those melancholy 
retreats called tea rooms to amuse themselves with 
gossip and extraordinary ices. But the young man 
leaves his desk at the appointed hour as bravely as 
ever pirate vessel left its wharf, and sails forth to 
sparkling and uncharted seas. 

Consider, for example, the case of James Jones, 
James spent his boyhood in a town less than a 
hundi'ed miles from New York. Visits to the city 
were great events in his young life. He was taken 
there to buy clothing, to go to the theater, to visit 
unusually exciting relatives who lived in apartment 
houses, rode on elevators, and drew milk from 
dumb-waiters. During his collegiate career James 
made occasional trips to New York, always with 
the theater and the tavern as his objectives. Tri- 

[71] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

iiniphantly now he feels himself actually a New 
Yorker, a dweller in no mean city. Joj^f ally, there- 
fore, he goes forth every noon to explore the terri- 
tory of his new possession. 

James is, let it be understood, nearer 20 than 25. 
He is beginning to regard his diploma with some 
disrespect, but he still wears his fraternity pin on 
an obscure corner of his waistcoat. Eveiy Satur- 
day morning he gets an envelope containing a $10 
bill and a $5 bill, and he has already formulated in 
his mind an eloquent appeal which cannot fail, he 
believes, to increase that amount to $18.50. James 
endeavors to seem as sophisticated as the chauffeur 
of a taxicab ; not for worlds woidd he betray the in- 
nocent delight with which he regards the city of his 
habitation. 

With James's occupation from 9 in the morning 
until the luncheon hour we have no concern. Per- 
haps he sits on a high stool and ciphers in a great 
ledger, perhaps he haltingly dictates letters to a 
patronizing stenographer, perhaps he urges certain 
necessities or luxuries upon a suspicious public. 
The important fact of his life — for us and, in a 
measure, for him — is that once every day he an- 
swers the welcome summons of the unkno^vn. 

Luncheon is a tiresome obligation, quickly to be 
[72] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

fulfilled. His mother would be vexed to see him 
gulp his malted milk or bolt his sandwich. On 
some occasions, with a pleasant sense of reckless- 
ness, he enters a bar, and, with something of a flour- 
ish, consumes beer and free lunch. With some dif- 
ficulty he refrains from looking over the swinging 
doors before leaving, as he did in his home town, to 
make sure that none of his neighbors are coming 
down the street. 

James left his desk only six minutes ago and his 
luncheon is already over. There remain fifty-four 
precious minutes. Behold him tasting rapturously 
of every second of these minutes! Behind a cheap 
but decorative cigar he walks up, perhaps, Fifth 
Avenue, undeniably that excellent thoroughfare's 
possessor. For his delight is Diana poised on her 
tower of purple memories; the grass of Madison 
Square is greener than that of his father's lawn; 
tulips more vivid than these never bloomed in the 
rich gardens of Holland. 

He is considered a sympathetic person, but at 
noon, I fear, his attitude is that of a realist. For 
he watches with ingenuous interest the antics of 
that drimkard on a park bench, and regards the 
arrival of the patrol wagon and summary removal 
of the culprit as a drama got up solely for his en- 

[73] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

tertainment. Regrettable as it may seem, it is 
with heightened spirits that he continues his stroll. 

Now he has reached a great bookshop which even 
the penniless find hospitable. "Some day," says 
James to himself, "two hundred copies of my novel 
will draw a crowd around this plate glass window.'* 
Mentally he arranges an effective window display 
and goes on to feast his eyes on vellum and sha- 
green, on calf dehcately tooled and parchment gay 
with gold leaf and many colored inks. Sometimes 
he enters the shop (the clerks are indulgent to 
James and his kind) and, over the merry pages of 
Jug end and JLa Vie Parisienne, rejoices that his 
father made him study modern languages at college. 

But literature must not claim too much of his 
fast-fleeting hour. There are shops at hand whose 
windows show things stranger than books; chairs 
and bedsteads eloquent of the genius of Adam and 
Heppelwhite; the massive silver platter on which 
old Wardle carved a Christmas goose when Mr. 
Pickwick was his guest; a mighty flagon that 
brimmed with red wine for Pantagruel; a carved 
jade bracelet from the brown arm of the Princess 
Badoura ; the sword of Robert Bruce. All lands, all 
ages have sent their treasures to New York this 
noon for the entertainment of James Jones. 
[74] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

It may be that this square of Japanese embroid- 
ery, on which fantastic knights thrust tremendous 
javehns at red and green dragons under astonished 
willows, was made in Paterson, N. J. What of 
that? The colors are not therefore less bright. 
James is not a purchaser, he is merely a spectator 
of the greatest raree-show in the world. It is well 
for him to be deceived in the splendors displayed 
before him. Not so many years ago he would pre- 
fer a red glass ball to the Kohinoor and a hand or- 
gan with a monkey to a piano with Paderewski. 
James yet retains a receptivity almost infantile; 
but it would pain him to be told so. 

They are not gregarious, at noon, these young 
discoverers of New York. They are selfish in their 
adventuring, for a vision shared is only half a vision. 
James, I know, is annoyed when he finds an ac- 
quaintance gobbling a sandwich at his luncheon 
counter or staring in a jeweler's window that he 
has come to regard as his own private property. 
On Sundays he is sociable enough; he is glad of a 
companion on his journeys across and up and down 
Manhattan, among the Italians and negroes of the 
upper west side, through the loud ghetto and spe- 
ciously weird Chinatown, in the deliberate sylvanity 
of Central Park and the Bronx Gardens. In the 

[75] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

evening, too, he is not at all a recluse. But at noon 
he has no appetite for conversation; he would not 
have his attention taken from the strange streets 
by an accustomed himian being. 

James has never ridden on a London bus, yet I 
believe in the truth of his unspoken thought, that a 
Fifth Avenue bus is the most excellent vehicle in 
the world. The London bus depends for its charm 
on a number of non-essential qualities; on the hu- 
mor of its driver (are the chauffeurs of London's 
electric buses also masters of epigram?), on the 
quaintness and antiquity of the thoroughfare, on 
the mihtary efficiency of the traffic policemen, on 
the philmayishness of the passengers. The Fifth 
Avenue bus has one reason for existence: it shows 
its passengers Fifth Avenue. No bus can do more. 

So one may (if one is young enough to be so 
foolish and so wise) ride, like the Gaikwar of Ba- 
roda in his swaying howdah, high above the people 
for a golden hour. He may start at uneasy Wash- 
ington Square, where ancient respectability wars 
with young bohemianism. Soon he looks down on 
the throngs of new Americans that tramp the once 
proud pavement. From his high seat he sees them, 
the small, dark men and women who, like him, are 
for a time released from labor. They move slowly 
[76] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

in great crowds, they eat frugal meals, the wares 
of curb-side peddlers, they talk and gesture in- 
cessantly. What does James think of them? I do 
not believe that his opinion is worth knowing. 

But he enjoys, I know, the tour through the traf- 
fic-filled intersection of Broadway and Twenty- 
third Street, and he is not old enough to notice with 
regret the gradual deterioration of the latter street. 
Freed from the close company of baser vehicles, 
how triumphantly the bus whirrs up the broad 
street past the square, among the splendid shops 
and clubs and churches — ^the true New Yorker, I 
think, names them in this order. But James must 
not give too much attention to the lovely Gothic 
lines of St. Thomas's, or the lovely Byzantine 
lines of that pink chiffon lady in the landau^ — the 
luncheon hour draws to a close, and punctuality, he 
still believes, is a business virtue. 

The brevity of this recess is essential to it. If 
the time be indefinitely increased, if the young ad- 
venturer be allowed all the morning and all the 
afternoon for his wandering, then all the zest goes 
out of the adventure. There is that trusted vet- 
eran employee in the corner of the office. He re- 
ceives fabulous sums on pay day and may go out 
to luncheon whenever he desires, with no time clerk 

[77] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

to censor him. He knows New York less than does 
James. But does his curiosity urge him forth to 
long adventures? Over his stale morning's paper 
in the deserted office, seated before his familiar 
task, he eats his sordid and wife-made luncheon! 

But the noon adventurer is not limited to Fifth 
Avenue. The antique shops of Fourth Avenue 
charm him with pewter and brass, they cheer his 
heart with sun dials from English rose gardens and 
crucifixes from convents of Dante's land and time. 
At Twenty-third Street stalls he reads bits of for- 
gotten writings and breathes the pleasant scent of 
worn calfskin. Perhaps on the 15-cent rack he 
comes upon a prize. Here is a little book of Eng- 
lish verse by a Japanese poet. What is this faded 
inscription? "To Mary McLane from Yone No- 
guchi." The adventurer buys it, as the late Mr. 
Morgan would buy a Nuremburg Bible, and salves 
his economical conscience by rolling his own cig- 
arettes for a while. 

There are great sights for him, now and then. 
People who seemed, not so long ago, as legendary 
as Cuchulain and Cinderella appear to him on these 
noon expeditions, most startlingly human and real. 
He sees Mr. Roosevelt leave the Charities Build- 
ing to enter a waiting taxicab. He visits the boot- 
[78] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

black and in the chair next to him sits Mr. Bliss 
Carman, crowned with the huge black hat that is 
the livery of Vagabondia. On Fourteenth Street a 
big black-haired man and a little spectacled woman 
stop to laugh at the fortune-telling paroquets. 
With a delicious thrill the adventurer recognizes 
Mr. Ben Reitman and Miss Emma Goldman. 

Nor are his adventures confined to seeing. There 
is plenty of action, sometimes. Once, as he stared 
into the windows of an Oriental rug shop, he was 
aware of a thin, hunted-looking man who demanded 
his attention. 

"I beg your pardon, Sir," said the hunted-look- 
ing man, "but can you tell me where I can find a 
parnbroker?" 

I do not know why the hunted-looking man said 
"parnbroker," instead of "pawnbroker," but 
James always tells the story this way. 

"No," said James, truthfully, "I can't." 

"The reason I wanna know is," said the hunted- 
looking man very rapidly, "I gotta very fine stone 
here. I got into a little trouble in a hotel uptown ; 
I gotta sell it right away very cheap." 

And from a dirty pasteboard box he drew what 
seemed to be a large diamond ring. 

Now was the thoroughly interested James aware 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of yet another stranger who sought his attention, a 
prosperous-looking man, who smoked a fat cigar 
and flourished a silver-headed stick, who seemed 
trying to caution James against buying the dia- 
mond. 

James had only 35 cents in his pocket, and was 
not a buj^er, but a spectator of jewelry anyway. 
The hunted-looking man withdrew slowly. Then 
said the prosperous-looking man to James: 

"Excuse me for buttin' in, old man, but I didn't 
want to see you stung. Sometimes these here fel- 
lers got real stones, sometimes they got fakes. Now 
I'm a professional jeweler and I got my microscope 
that I look at diamonds with in my pocket. Now, 
you call that guy back and tell him I'm a friend of 
yours and I'll examine that stone and tell you if it's 
any good." 

The hunted-looldng man gave rather too dra- 
matic a start of surprise when called back by the 
suspicious but curious James. 

"It's worth $500," he said, "but I'll sell it for 
$50. I got into a little trouble at a hotel uptown, 
and I gotta sell it cheap." 

Professionally, elaborately, impressively, the 
prosperous-looking man screwed a glass into his 
eye and squinted at the stone. Then, taking James 
[80] 



NOON-HOUR ADVENTURING 

several yards away from the hunted-looking man, 
he said: "That's a genuine stone worth easy $500 
if it's worth a cent. I know a place they'll give us 
$500 for it this afternoon on account of me being in 
the trade. Now, you keep him here while I go 
round the corner and get $25 from my bank and 
then we'll buy that stone together and make $225 
apiece before two hours is gone. I'll be right back." 

And the prosperous-looking man vanished. 

Then — as might have been expected — the hunt- 
ed-looking man offered James the diamond for 
$25. "You can put one over on that big guy," he 
said. "Slip me $25 and we beat it before he gets 
back. You can clean up $450 on it. I'm afraid of 
that big guy; I think he's gone after a cop." 

Now, these two confidence men had worked hard 
with James. He should not have taken such de- 
light in their discomfiture as he climbed the steps 
of a bus and bade them farewell. 

When he met the hunted-looking man and the 
prosperous-looking man together on Broadway a 
few days later they cut him, and I do not blame 
them. But they gave him a real adventure, at 
any rate, an adventure not to be met by those who 
squander their noon hour sitting dully in sedate 
restaurants. 

[81] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Then there was the adventure of the picture gal- 
lery. James went on one occasion to a futurist ex- 
hibition in a tiny room not far from Madison 
Square. Galleries are not crowded at noon, but 
from the room that James approached came sounds 
not to be accounted for even by the crazy canvases 
on its walls. Of course James went in, and found 
a futurist painter wrestling with the agent of a 
collection agency. The combatants rose, and de- 
manded James's name and address, that he might, 
be summoned to court as a witness to assault and 
battery. But he never received either summons. 
Perhaps it was because he»gave his name as Henry 
Smith of Yonkers. 

Episodes like these have little charm for the mid- 
dle-aged or for young men prematurely aged by 
spending their childhood in New York. These have 
their compensations, no doubt; their lives are not 
utterly bleak. But not for them is the daily ro- 
mance of the young man who has just come to the 
city, who enjoys the proud novelty of working for 
wage, to whom every noon come sweet and strange 
the streets' compelling voices. 



[82] 



SIGNS AND SYMBOLS 

THOSE people whom an hostile fate has made 
both athletes and reformers have among their 
aversions one which they proclaim with an enthusi- 
asm so intense as to be almost infectious. They 
dislike passionately the harmless, unnecessary sign 
board when it has been so placed as to become a 
feature of the rural landscape. Wooden cows sil- 
houetted against the sunset only irritate them by 
their gentle celebrations of malted milk ; the friend- 
liest invitation to enjoy a cigarette, a corset or a 
digestive tablet fills them with anger if it comes 
from the face of a sea-shadowing cliff or from 
among the ancient hemlocks of a lofty mountain. 
There is, of course, a modicum of reason in their 
attitude. It is wrong to paint the lily at all; it is 
doubly wrong to paint "Wear Rainproof Socks" 
across its virgin petals. It is wrong to mar beauty ; 
that is an axiom of all aesthetics and of all ethics. 
It would be wrong, for example (although it would 
be highly amusing), to throw by means of a magic 
lantern great colored phrases against Niagara's 

[83] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

sheet of foam; it would be ^vi'ong to carve (as many 
earnest readers of our magazines believe has been 
done) an insurance company's advertisement on 
the Rock of Gibraltar. 

But the ffisthete-reformer, in condemning such 
monstrosities as these, condemns merely an hy- 
pothesis. And since the hypothesis obviously is 
condemnable, he starts a crusade against the inno- 
cent facts upon which the purely hypothetical evil 
is based. It is wrong to mar the snowy splendor 
of the Alps ; therefore, he says, the Jersey meadows 
must not bear upon their damp bosom the jubilant 
banner of an effective safety-razor. The sylvan 
fastness of our continent must be saved from the 
vandal; therefore, he says, you may not advertise 
breakfast food on a hoarding in the suburbs of 
Paterson. 

If the assthete-reformers in question would ex- 
amine the subject dispassionately they would see 
that there is really nothing in the sign board as it 
stands to-day about which they may justly com- 
plain. Advertisers do not deliberately annoy the 
public; they would not be so foolish as to seek to 
attract people by spoiling what was beautiful. It 
must be remembered that a landscape may be rustic 
and yet not beautiful. 
[84] 



SIGNS AND SYMBOLS 

The aesthete does not disKke, instead he hails 
with enthusiasm, a worn stone bearing the dim in- 
scription "18 Mil. To Ye Cittye of London." 
Why then should he shudder when he sees a bright 
placard which shouts "18 Miles to the White Way 
Shoe Bazaar, Paterson's Pride"? To my mind 
there is a vivacity and a humanness about the sec- 
ond announcement utterly lacking in the first. The 
aesthete dotes upon the swinging boards which with 
crude paintings announce the presence of British 
inns. If "The Purple Cow, by Geoffrey Pump. 
Entertainment for Man and Beast" delights his 
soul, why does he turn in angry sorrow from "Stop 
at the New Mammoth Hotel when you are in 
Omaha — 500 Rooms and Baths — $1.50 up — All 
Fireproof"? It is a cheerful invitation, and it 
should bring to jaded travelers through the track- 
pierced wastes a comfortable sense of approaching 
welcome and companionship. 

There are many things which might be said in 
favor of urban sign boards, especially in favor of 
those elaborate arrangements in colored lights 
which make advertisements of table waters and 
dress fabrics as alluringly lovely as the electrical 
splendor of the first act of Dukas' "Ariane et Barbe 
Bleu." But in the city the sign board is always 

[85] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

something supererogatory; it may be decorative, 
but it is not necessary. One does not need a six- 
yard announcement of a beer's merit when there are 
three saloons across the street ; even the placards of 
plays line almost uselessly the thoroughfares of a 
district in which the theaters are conspicuous. 

But in the country the sign boards are no lux- 
uries but stern necessities. This the aesthete- 
reformers fail to see because they lack a sense of the 
unfitness of things. It is their incongruity which 
gives to rustic sign boards the magic of romance. 
The deliberately commercial announcement, firmly 
set in an innocent meadow or among the eternal 
hills, has exactly the same charm as a buttercup in a 
city street or a gray wood-dove fluttering among 
the stern eaves of an apartment house. 

What a benefaction to humanity these rural sign 
boards are! To the farmer they are (in addition to 
being a source of revenue) a piquant suggestion of 
the wise and wealthy city. He loves and fears the 
city, as mankind always loves and fears the un- 
known. Once he thought that it was paved with , 
gold. He must have thought so, otherwise how 
could he have accounted for the existence of gold 
bricks? He is less credulous now, but still the big 
£86] 



SIGNS AND SYMBOLS 

signs down where the track cuts across the old 
pasture pleasantly thrill his fancy. 

And what would a railway journey be without 
these gay and civilizing reminders ? They hide the 
shame of black and suicidal bogs with cheery hints 
of vaudeville beyond, they throw before the privacy 
of farmhouses a decent veil of cigarette advertise- 
ments. He who speeds vacation-ward from the city 
is glad of them, for they remind him that he is 
where factories and huge shops may come only in 
this pictured guise, thin painted ghosts of their 
noisy selves. He who gladly speeds back to do- 
mesticity and the ordered comforts of metropolitan 
life sees them as welcoming seneschals, glorious ad- 
vance-posts of civilization. They are the least com- 
mercial of all commercial things, they are as human 
and as delightful as explorers or valentines. 



[87] 



THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 

WHENEVER I read Mr. Chester Firkins* 
excellent poem "On a Subway Express" I 
am filled with amazement. It is not strange that 
Mr. Firkins turned the subway into poetry, it is 
strange that the subway does not turn every one of 
its passengers into a poet. 

There are, it is true, more comfortable means 
of locomotion than the subway; there are convey- 
ances less crowded, better ventilated, cooler in 
Summer, warmer in Winter. A little discomfort, 
however, is an appropriate accompaniment of ad- 
venture. And subway-riding is a splendid adven- 
ture, a radiant bit of romance set in the gray fabric 
of the work-a-day world. 

The aeroplane has been celebrated so enthusias- 
tically in the course of its brief life that it must 
by now be a most offensively conceited machine. 
Yet an aeroplane ride, however picturesque and 
dangerous, has about it far less of essential ro- 
mance than a ride in the subway. He who sails 
through the sky directs, so nearly as is possible, his 
[88] 



THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 

course; lie handles levers, steers, goes up or down, 
to the left or the right. Or if he is a passenger, he 
has, at any rate, full knowledge of what is going on 
around him, he sees his course before him, he can 
call out to the man at the helm : "Look out for that 
comet's hair ! Turn to the left or the point of that 
star will puncture our sail!" 

Now, unseen dangers are more thrilling than 
those seen; the aeroplane journey has about it in- 
evitably something prosaic. This is the great 
charm of the subway, that the passengers, the 
guards, too, for that matter, give themselves up 
to adventure with a blind and beautiful reckless- 
ness. They leave the accustomed sunlight and 
plunge into subterranean caverns, into a region far 
more mysterious than the candid air, into a region 
which since mankind was young has been associated 
with death. Before an awed and admiring crowd, 
the circus acrobat is shut into a hollow ball and 
catapulted across the rings; with not even a sense 
of his own bravado, the subway passenger is shut 
into a box and shot twenty miles through the earth. 

Once there lived on West One Hundred and 
Eighty-second Street a man of uncompromising 
practicality, a stem rationalist. He was as ad- 
vanced as anything! He believed in the material- 

[89] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

istic interpretation of history, economic determin- 
ism, and radium ; this, he said, with some pride, was 
liis Creed. Often he expressed his loathing for 
"flesh-food," more frequently for "Middle Class 
morality," most frequently for faith. "Faith is 
stupidity," he would say. "Look before you leap ! 
It makes me sick to see the way people have been 
humbugged in all ages. The capitalist class has 
told them something was true, something nobody 
could understand, and they've blindly accepted it, 
the idiots! I believe in what I see — I don't take 
chances. I don't trust anybody but myself." 

Yet every day this man would give himself up 
to the subway with a sweet and child-like faith. As 
he sat in the speeding car, he could not see his 
way, he had no chance of directing it. He trusted 
that the train would keep to its route, that it would 
stop at Fourteenth Street and let him off. He 
could not keep it from taking him under the river 
,and hurling him out into some strange Brooklyn 
desert. When he started for home in the evening, 
he read the words "Dyckman Street" on the car 
window with a medieval simplicity, and on the guar- 
antee of these printed words, placed there by 
minions of the capitalist class, he gave up the privi- 
lege of directing his course. The train, he believed, 
[90] 



THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 

would not at Ninety-sixth Street be switched off to 
a Bronx track; the sign told him that he was safe, 
and he believed it. 

So the subway caused him to exercise the virtue 
of faith, made him, for a time, really a human 
being. Perhaps it is the sharing of this faith that 
makes a subway crowd so democratic. Surely there 
is some subtly powerful influence at work, chang- 
ing men and women as soon as they take their seats, 
or straps. 

For one thing, they become alike in appearance. 
The glare of the electric light unifies them, modify- 
ing swarthy faces and faces delicately rouged until 
they are nearly of one hue. Then, the differences 
of attitude are lost, and attitudes are great instru- 
ments of subordination. The ragged bootblack 
does not kneel at the broker's feet ; he sits close be- 
side him, or perhaps, comfortably at rest, watches 
the broker clutch a strap and struggle to keep his 
footing. 

"Tired clerks, pale girls, street-cleaners, business 
men, boys, priests and sailors, drunkards, students, 
thieves" — all gain a new sincerity. Neither ithe 
millionaire's imperiousness nor the beggar's pro- 
fessional humility can make the train go faster, so 
both are laid aside. Distinctions of race and caste 

[91] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

grow insignificant, as in a company confronting one 
peril or one God. This is not theory, it is fact. 
The subway passenger purchases a nickel's worth 
of speed and he must take with it a nickel's worth 
of democracy. 

Perhaps it is the youthful romanticism of Amer- 
ica which makes our subways so much more exciting 
than those of Europe. The Englishman is too 
cautious and too conservative to trust himself away 
from the earth's surface more than two minutes at 
a time. So the trains that run through the London 
tube are tame, cowardly things. They timidly run 
underground for half a mile or so and pop their 
heads out into the air and sunlight or fog at every 
station. 

But the New York subway train is ready to take 
a chance. It dives into the earth and "stays under," 
like a brave diver, for an hour at a time. And 
when it does emerge, what splendor attends its 
coming! There is a glimmer of sunshine at the One 
Hundred and Sixteenth Street Station; the blue 
and white of the walls and pillars reflect a light not 
wholly artificial. Then there is a brief stretch of 
fantastically broken darkness. Passengers in the 
first car can see ahead of them, at Manhattan 
Street, a great .door of sunshine. At last there is 
[92] 



THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 

a strange change in the rumble of the wheels, for 
the echoing roof and walls are gone, and the train 
leaves its tunnel not to run humbly over the ground, 
but to rise higher and higher until it comes to a 
sudden halt above the chimneys and tree tops. To 
say that the grub becomes a butterfly does not fit 
the case, for the grub is a slow-moving beast and 
a butterfly's course is capricious. Rather, it is as 
if, by some tremendous magic, a great snake be- 
came a soaring eagle. 

And how keenly all the passengers enjoy their 
few seconds in the open air! When they hurried 
down the steps to the train, they were scornful of 
the atmosphere they were leaving, they had no 
thought of tasting wind and watching sunlight. 
Now they are become, for the moment, connoisseurs 
of these delectable things ; they wish the train would 
linger at Manhattan Street, not inevitably plunge 
at once into its roaring cavern. But the train is 
wise, it knows brevity is essential to all exquisite 
things, so it gives its passengers only an evanescent 
glimpse of the glories they have just now learned 
to appreciate. 

This is a part of the great conspiracy of the sub- 
way. It is regarded only as a swift and convenient 
and uncomfortable carrier, and it has no wish to be 

L831 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

otherwise interpreted. But those who have studied 
it know the hidden purposes it constantly and ef- 
fectively serves. It is showing our generation the 
value of mankind's commonest and most precious 
gifts, by taking them away. 

Now, it is good for man or beast to stand on solid 
ground in the sunlight, breathing clean air. Also 
fellowship is good, and the talk of friends. We for- 
got the value of these, we shut ourselves up in dark 
rooms and we spared no time to social exercise. 
Then — to punish and cure our folly — came the sub- 
way, making our journeys things close and dark in 
which conversation is a matter of desperate effort. 
And now how kind and talkative are people who 
go home together from the subway station after 
their daily disciplinary ridel They are gi-ateful, 
too — although it may be subconsciously — for the 
familiar sights and sounds of the earth, for houses 
and streets and light that does not come from a 
wire in a bottle. They take gladly the great com- 
mon things ; they are simple, natural, democratic. 

So they spend much of their leisure out of doors, 
these men and women who are imderground two 
hours every weekday. In the evenings and on Sun- 
day afternoons, they walk the pleasant streets with 
eager delight. They are curious about the loveli- 
[94] 



THE GREAT NICKEL ADVENTURE 

ness far beneath which they daily speed. They 
have learned something of the art of life. 

Of course, the subway has its incidental charms 
— its gay fresco of advertisements, for instance, 
and its faint mysterious thunder when it runs near 
the surface of the street on which we stand. But 
its chief service to man — perhaps its reason for 
existence — is that it gives him adventure. In this 
adventure he meets the spirit of faith and the spirit 
of democracy, which is an aspect of charity. And 
by their influence he becomes, surely though but 
for a time, as a little child. 



[95] 



THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 

IF the rooster selected tree-tops for his roost- 
ing, crowed mournfully at the moon, and were 
a wild, unfriendly bird, every man's hand would be 
against him. But we forgive him his ugliness and 
conceit, not only because he is a dutiful citizen of 
the barnyard, but also because now, as in the days 
of the noble Horatio, he obligingly acts as "trumpet 
to the morn." On account of this romantic and 
sometimes useful custom, he wears a sentimental 
halo. M. Rostand has made him the hero of a 
drama. When will some wise plaj'vj^'right celebrate 
his urban prototype, the alarm clock? 

The spirit in which this question is asked is not 
wholly one of mockery. For the alarm clock is 
close to humanity; in the city household, few bits 
of furniture are more personal and necessary. It 
is a faithful servant, this loud-voiced creature of 
steel and glass, obedient, punctual, patient. And 
its association with its owner, I had almost written 
its master, is so peculiarly intimate as to give it a 
personality and an attitude toward life. 
[96] 



THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 

In the first place, it is irresistibly egotistic. 
There are some usual possessions which become 
subconscious things, their identities merging with 
the shadows of the vague land of habit. One may, 
for instance, possess a watch and yet not be aware 
of the watch as he is aware of his alarm clock. He 
lifts it from and returns it to his pocket; he winds 
it, with a gesture almost involuntary; he takes his 
information from his dial as thoughtlessly as he 
takes his breath from the atmosphere. Though it 
be made of fine gold, cunningly chased and 
blazoned with precious stones, it is to him, after 
the first delight of its acquisition, the unregarded 
means to an important end. So long as it serves 
him unprotestingly, he thinks of it no more than 
of his soul. People do not specifically ask him to 
consult his watch, they ask, "What time is it?" and 
even "Have you the time?" 

Not thus does an alarm clock sink into oblivion. 
At least twice in twenty- four hours its owner must 
be vividly aware of its existence. It imperiously 
demands of him conscious action. In the morning 
dangerously, at night dumbly, it insists on atten- 
tion. He must with thought adjust its mechan- 
ism, he must give it intelligent orders. And 
whether he rises at its summons or instead shuts 

[97] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

out with a pillow its voice and that of conscience, 
he cannot ignore it. By no effort of will could 
Frankenstein forget his monster. 

Not that the alarm clock is always a thing mon- 
strous and threatening. It obeys orders with sol- 
dierly exactness but its sympathy is most unmartial. 
Routine cannot deaden its sensitivity. True, its or- 
dinary note is something dry and monotonous. 
This comes from its perfect sense of the fitness of 
things; the call to business should be business-like. 
But what triumphant peals burst from its tiny bel- 
fry when it bids you rise and put on robes of honor ! 
It can mimic the proud mirth of wedding bells; it 
knows the mighty song that rang from all the tow- 
ers of London to cheer Dick Whittington. And 
that it can utter harsh and strident grief, those 
know who lie down with Sorrow and must awaken 
with her. 

Even the most materialistic man has for his alarm 
clock a shame-faced personal regard. He speaks 
of it deprecatingly, with a humorous show of in- 
dignation. He tells how he maltreated it, knocked 
it from the mantel, smothered it with blankets, and 
there is a note of almost paternal exultation in his 
voice when he describes its persistence in ringing. 

Franker souls actually parade what may be 
[98] 



THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 

termed their alarm-clockophilia. A friend of mine, 
one Carolus Dillingham, talks by the hour of his 
Nellie. Nellie is not, to the casual observer, an 
alarm clock of extraordinary merit. She was con- 
structed many years ago and her nickel-plating is 
nearly gone. She is a small, weak-looking thing, 
with a great dome absolutely out of proportion to 
her rickety body. A result of her ridiculous con- 
struction is that when the alarm rings, she becomes 
slightly overbalanced, trembles, and moves a frac- 
tion of an inch forward on her feeble legs. 

This, according to Carolus, is her chief charm. 
"I put Nelhe," he says, "on the very edge of the 
shelf by the foot of my bed. When she rings in 
the morning she topples off and lands on the 
blankets. So I don't need to get up and walk 
across the cold floor. I can just reach out and 
choke her. I think she is the most faithful alarm 
clock in the world." 

One little regarded virtue of the alarm clock is its 
sturdy democracy. It belongs irrevocably to the 
people, nothing can make it a snob. There is a 
watch for every rank; there are coarse peasant 
watches, fat bourgeois watches, and watches deli- 
cately aristocratic. But the alarm clock in the tene- 
ment of the laborer is the exact duplicate of that 

[99] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

which wakens his employer; an alarm clock's an 
alarm clock for a' that. America will never really 
be a decadent nation until its alarm clocks are 
jeweled and soft-voiced. 

The captious critic may object that the reason 
for the plainness of alarm clocks is that their use 
is restricted to what is loosely called "the work- 
ing class." There is some truth in this. 

Up to the present I have never witnessed the 
awaking of an aristocrat, or even of a captain of 
industry, but I suppose that they are hailed in soft 
tones by liveried menials, who bring them golden 
trays absolutely overflowing with breakfast food 
and remarkably thick cream. But aristocrats and 
captains of industry are rare birds, and all other 
people must have alarm clocks. 

All other people, that is, who live in cities. For 
the alarm clock, in spite of its numerous excel- 
lences, is as inappropriate in the country as rouge 
on a milkmaid. The farmer must try to live up to 
his craft, and one of the jesthetic duties is to depend 
on mechanism as little as possible. His wife should 
rise when she hears the poultry saluting the dawn. 
Then, so nearly as I remember her obligations, 
she should go out on the front porch and blow a 
conchshell until her husband wakes up. 
[100] 



THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 

The dweller in the suburbs is a creature of com- 
promise. He grows vegetables and keeps chickens, 
perhaps he grows vegetables for the use of the 
chickens, and he cultivates a rural manner of 
speech. But he spends most of his waking hours 
in the city and every night he brings out with him 
on the five-twenty-seven some device to alter the 
simplicity of the country. He is an ambiguous 
creature, analogous to the merman. And the con- 
spicuous symbol of his ambiguity is his alarm clock. 
It is in ruralia but not of it. It stands by a win- 
dow that opens on an orchard, but it indicates the 
factory and market-place. It is a link between its 
owner's two personalities, it is the skeleton at the 
feast, reminding him, when he comes in from weed- 
ing the strawberry patch, that he must get up at a 
quarter to seven the next morning and hurry to 
the noisy train. Never does an alarm clock look 
so blatantly mechanical as when it stands in a cot- 
tage of one of the people barbarously termed "com- 
muters." 

For in the city, where everything is mechanical, 
the alarm clock seems pleasantly personal. It is at 
home there, it is perfectly in keeping with its sur- 
roundings. It takes on as comfortable an air of 
domesticity as the most ornate Swiss timepiece that 

[101] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

ever said "Cuckoo"; it is contented, sociable, a 
member of the family. There is a sense of strange- 
ness in the apartmeat that has no alarm clock; it is 
like a catless fireside. 

And by association with the other sounds of 
awaking life, which even in the most sordid slum 
have about them something of energy and hope, 
the morning chorus of alarm clocks, echoing down 
the paved canyons from six to eight, make, in the 
ears of the unprejudiced listener, a cheerful noise. 
With them comes the mysterious creaking of the 
dumb-waiter as it ascends with the milk, an ade- 
quate substitute for the lowing of the herd. 
Kitchens and kitchenettes take on new life, and 
issue grateful odors of coffee and bacon. And 
babies, seeing that their weary parents are leaving 
them, decide at last that it is time to go to sleep. 

An alarm clock can, on occasion, preach a ser- 
mon that would arouse the envy of Savonarola. 
When the jaded reveler returns to his home at day- 
break, wastes ten minutes in a frantic attempt to 
awaken the elevator boy, and climbs, with cursing 
and gnashing of teeth, the eight flights of stairs that 
lead to his apartment, then nothing more sharply 
reminds him of his truancy than the voices of the 
[102] 



THE URBAN CHANTICLEER 

alarm clocks calling to each other in the bedrooms 
of his virtuous neighbors. 

Not even the laziest or the weariest man can hate 
the alarm clock as he does the factory whistle. The 
shrill blast that comes every morning from the iron 
throat of this monster has in it a note of contemp- 
tuous menace. The tired laborers awaken at their 
master's bidding; there is something unnatural 
about this abrupt wholesale termination of sleep. 
But the discipline of the alarm clock is another mat- 
ter; he who hears it listens, it may be said, to his 
own voice. He himself has set it, he has fixed the 
very moment of his own awaking. And there is 
dignity in observing rules self-imposed, however 
irksome they may be. The alarm clock is the sym- 
bol of civilization, that is, of voluntary submission, 
of free will obedience. 

The careful reader will be aware that many as- 
pects of this excellent device have been neglected in 
this brief consideration. I have said nothing of the 
alarm clock's sense of humor and of its willingness 
to become a party to practical jokes. I have said 
nothing of how it may be pleased, of its pride, for 
instance, in being referred to as an "alarum clock." 
But it has one characteristic which I must mention, 
its usefulness to the suddenly rich. 

[103] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

There is a delightful sort of novel, Mrs. Frances 
Hodgson Burnett wrote one, and so did Mr, H. 
G. Wells, which deals with the adventures of a 
young man who has unexpectedly inherited a for- 
tune. Samuel Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year" 
is perhaps the greatest example of this manner of 
fiction. Well, if I were T. Tembarom, or Kipps, 
or Tittlebat Titmouse (Dr. Warren's hero), my 
alarm clock would be necessary for my first act of 
celebration. Perhaps I should throw it from a win- 
dow, perhaps I should remove its bell, perhaps I 
should merely enjoy letting it run down. At any 
rate, its presence would be necessary to the complete 
enjoyment of my new freedom. 



[104] 



DAILY TRAVELING 

GIVE a dog a bad name and hang him. Call 
the custom of daily travel "commuting" and 
deliver it over to the whips of the scorner. The in- 
transitive verb "to commute" is a barbarous thing; 
he who is called "commuter" is thereby rudely and 
ungrammatically taunted with journeying at re- 
duced rates, with being (terrible thought!) the re- 
cipient of a railway's charity. 

It is lamentable that so picturesque a habit as 
daily railway travel should be thus misnamed. That 
it is a picturesque habit is perceived by anyone who 
takes the trouble to consider it scientifically, shut- 
ting resolutely from his mind the odium brought 
upon it by its odious name. Suppose, for instance, 
that you were to go into the tap-room of the Mer- 
maid Tavern some winter evening during the reign 
of the, so to speak, Good Queen Bess. The ven- 
erable Mr. Alfred Noyes would lead you to the 
table always reserved for Messrs. Shakespeare, 
Marlowe and Jonson. You would take from your 
pocket your commutation ticket, and, holding aloft 

[105] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

that cabalistically inscribed oblong of colored card- 
board, would sonorously declaim: 

"By means of this talisman I daily fly across 
leagues of the New World, from my cottage in a 
primeval forest to the heart of a mighty city. It 
enables me to lead two lives; I am on week days 
urban, sophisticated, a man of commerce; at night 
and on Sundays I am a smocked yokel, innocent 
among my innocent vegetables. This little square 
of cardboard enables me to ride in a splendid 
vehicle propelled by Nature herself more swiftly 
than the wind, a vehicle which laughs at time and 
obliterates space. The masters of romance, bowing 
in homage, have bestowed upon me the mystic and 
awful name 'commuter.' " 

Such a tale would draw Marlowe from his Malm- 
sey and thrill the stout heart of mighty Ben. And 
Avon's bard, charmed by a fact more golden than 
all his imaginings, would augustly murmur "Very 
good, Eddie!' 

It is a picturesque thing, this daily trip between 
the meadows and the pavements. By general con- 
sent, a vagabond is the most romantic of men; an 
allusion to the open road, wandering feet or the 
starlight on one's face is sufficient to turn an ordi- 
nary rhymer into that radiant being, a "tramp- 
[106] 



DAILY TRAVELING 

poet." Then what glory must cMng to those habit- 
ual vagabonds, those devotees of the steel high- 
way, whom we call commuters. The common 
tramp seldom covers more than ten miles from sun- 
rise to sundown; as a loile his pilgrimage is even 
briefer. Yet he is called a knight of the open road 
and even the staidest householder has a sneaking 
admiration for him. The gypsy is no true vaga- 
bond, for he takes with him his wife, children, dogs, 
furniture, and even his canvas-roofed house. Yet 
our writers, from Borrow to Kipling, delight to 
urge us to ha' done with the tents of Shem, dear 
lass, and follow the Romany patteran. The only 
authentic vagabond is he who every day goes thirty 
miles from his rural home to the city and every 
night thirty miles back, diving through mountains, 
plunging under rivers; twice on every week-day, 
a wanderer more free and venturesome than La- 
vengro himself. 

But its picturesqueness is not the sole recom- 
mendation of daily railway travel. The greatest of 
its numerous virtues is that it is democratic, the 
only absolutely democratic institution in the United 
States of America. It is the mighty leveler, the 
irresistible enemy of social subordination. 

In a city, town or village in which the citizens re- 

[107] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

main night and day there can be no true democracy. 
The intentions of its inliabitants may be excellent, 
but circumstances will be stronger. There is the 
minister, there is the banker, there is the doctor, 
there is the grocer, there is the cobbler, there is the 
minister's hired man. If a New England rural 
community is under observation there will also be 
noted the village atheist, the village drunkard, and 
the village Democrat. The population is sharply 
divided into classes; there may be friendliness 
among the various grades of humanity, there may 
be liberty, but there can be no fraternity, no equal- 
ity. 

How different is the community in which people 
merely dwell, having their business elsewhere! 
What is their occupation? They go to The City — 
that is sufficient answer to admit them to fellow- 
shii3. If curiosity be still unsatisfied, there is the 
mention of the name of a great firm, and all is 
well. 

The cobbler, you see, keeps his last in the city, 
away from his home and his neighbors ; he does not 
stick to it, as the unpleasant adage bids him. As 
he sits on his red velvet chair, enjopng with his 
neighbors tobacco smoke, rapid travel, and the news 
of the world, who shall say whether he deals in 
[108] 



DAILY TRAVELING 

shoes or in empires? Next to him is Dusenbury, 
who in addition to going to New York, goes to 
Wall Street, rumor has it. What does he do in 
Wall Street ? Does he corner the wheat market or 
clean out waste baskets? Those who know, who 
say to him, "Sir" or "Hey, you," are not his com- 
panions on the 7.57. 

There is a certain charm about what is called, 
ridiculously enough, a "commuting town," which 
is altogether lacking in other communities. A 
"commuting town" is wholly a place of homes — 
not of homes diluted with offices, factories and 
shops. It is therefore the quintessence of domes- 
ticity, being domestic with an intensity which no 
village which is remote from the centers of civiliza- 
tion, which furnishes employment and supplies to 
its own citizens can hope to approach. 

Such a town is daily divided and joined, dimin- 
ished and completed, thereby keeping in a state of 
healthy activity. The 7.57 takes away, the 5.24 
brings back. These recurrent separations and re- 
unions are not without their ethical and emotional 
value. 



[109] 



INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK 

THAT dislike of the obvious which is the chief 
characteristic of American humor is clearly 
exemplified in the names of most of New York's 
streets. 

The dwellers in a great European city would 
give their proudest avenue of great shops and rich 
clubs some dignified and significant title, like the 
Rue de la Paix or the Friedrichstrasse. The 
Asiatics would give it a name more definitely de- 
scriptive and laudatory, like "The Street of the 
Thousand and One Mirrors of Delight." The New 
Yorkers, "laconic and Olympian," designate it by 
a simple numeral. They call it Fifth Avenue. 

It comes partly from the national reticence, this 
prosaic name of a poetic thoroughfare. It is a man- 
ifestation of that attitude of mind which makes us 
to call a venerated and beloved statesman merely 
"Old Abe," when the English would call him "the 
Grand Old JNIan" and the Italians "the Star- 
crowned Patriarch." Also it is a phase of our 
democracy. We will not seem to exalt one avenue 
[110] 



INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK 

over another by giving it a fairer name ; Fifth Ave- 
nue sounds to the uninitiated no more wealthy and 
aristocratic than Fourth Avenue. Indeed, if there 
be any partiaHty in the awarding of names, it would 
seem to be exercised in favor of First Avenue or 
Avenue A. 

It may be objected that the sponsors of Fifth 
Avenue did not foresee its destined splendor. But 
this fact does not alter the case ; we continue to call 
it Fifth Avenue, whereas Europeans would alter 
its name to something more appropriate to its 
grandeur. 

There was a pilgrim from the Five Towns who 
said that Fifth Avenue was architecturally the 
finest street in the world. This might pass for a 
guest's flattery, were it not that Mr. Arnold Ben- 
nett is of a nation which does not count gracious in- 
sincerity among its vices. New York must blush- 
ingly admit the truth of his judgment. 

It is not (he said) harmonious. Its beauty is 
made up of units of beauty related only by position. 
This, too, is characteristically American. Each 
building must have its distinctive excellence. 

To give a street of wonders an austere name, to 
build palaces and fill them with offices and shops — 
these are the acts by which Americans are known. 

[HI] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

And especially does the New Yorker delight in the 
whimsical, the inconsistent, the unexpected. He is 
like a child who likes to dig in the sand with a 
silver spoon and to eat porridge with a toy shovel. 

And this delicate perversity has its refreshing as- 
pect. Fifth Avenue, surely, is a thing to admire 
in the new sense as well as the old. It sometimes 
suggests, perhaps, the ill-natured definition of a 
New Yorker as a man who, when he makes a set 
of chimes, puts it in a life insurance building. But 
it more often suggests a restatement of this defini- 
tion ; that is, that a New Yorker is a man who, when 
he makes a life insurance building, puts a set of 
chimes in it. 

Now, certain masters of the mirthless science of 
psychology teach that humor depends on incon- 
gruity. Whether or not this is true, incongruity 
has much to do with making life worth while. For 
incongruity is the soul of romance. 

Nobility, love, courage, beauty — the possession 
of these qualities does not give to a man or a woman 
romantic charm. A person is a hero or a heroine of 
romance because he or she lives in a contrasting 
place or age. For example, a cowboy riding a 
bucking bronco and whirling his lariat under a can- 
vas roof in some sedate Eastern town is properly 
[112] 



INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK 

considered by the spectators to be a romantic fig- 
ure. A cowboy engaged in the same interesting 
occupations on a Texas ranch would not be con- 
sidered a romantic figure by his neighbors. It is 
incongruity of environment that romantically 
transforms him. 

People and things of bygone ages are romantic 
to us because the years have gilded them. They 
were not romantic to their contemporaries. Says 
Edwin Arlington Robinson: 

Minniver loved the Medici 

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; 

He missed the mediseval grace 
Of iron clothing. 

Exactly. Minniver Cheevy was a true roman- 
ticist. A plumed knight, armed cap-a-pie, is a 
romantic figure when we merely see him through 
the years from our modern surroundings by means 
of imagination's powerful lens; he would be a 
figure even more romantic if we could actually see 
him shake his lance and lead his warriors against 
a drab-suited, machine-like company of present- 
day soldiers. Why, even horse cars, commonplace 
enough in their day, take on a certain sentimental 
luster when they lie abandoned in the outskirts of 

[113] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

cities proud with electricity. And a, subway train 
will one day be as romantic a spectacle as a stage 
coach. 

Sometimes a building is deliberately given the 
romance of incongruity. This certainly is the case 
with the New York Stock Exchange. This splendid 
Grecian temple, with its lofty columns and noble 
facade, would, if it stood in ancient Athens, be, of 
course, beautiful, but in no respect romantic. It 
is romantic because it is in a place where it would 
not naturally be expected and because it is devoted 
to uses for which it does not seem to have been in- 
tended. If the god therein worshij^ed were not 
Mammon, but altisonant Jupiter, if white-robed 
priests found the future prefigured in the warm 
blood of the lambs therein sacrificed — ^then the 
building which now houses the clamoring merchants 
would be merely dignified and practical and not, as 
it is today, romantic. 

The use of this Grecian temple as a counting 
house is a splendid example of the poetic tendency 
of a popular mind. The common business terms — 
"Bull" and "Bear," for example — are incongruous, 
and therefore romantic. And a successful business 
man is not realistically called a successful business 
[114] 



INCONGRUOUS NEW YORK 

man; he is romantically called a "merchant prince" 
or a ''captain of industry." 

But most of New York's romantic places get 
their glory not by plan, but by the accident of de- 
sign. You turn the corner from a sombre street 
lined by tall concrete and steel structures that ob- 
viously are of your own period and come suddenly 
upon a mellow bit of New Amsterdam. You would 
not be surprised to see old Peter Stuyvesant stump 
down Coenties Slip and drop in for his morning's 
Hollands at "22i/>," across the way. There are 
streets and squares and alleys in downtown New 
York that look now exactly as they did when Times 
Square was a cow pasture and the Bowery really 
bowery. But these places were not romantic to the 
citizens of that time; they would not be romantic 
to us if by some strange backward transmigration 
of souls we should inhabit a vanished century. 

No, we are fortunate to live when Battery Place 
and Coenties Slip have acquired romance's glamour. 
Incongruity is the soul of romance. And these 
quaint time-hallowed places have the loveliest 
sort of incongruity — the magical incongruity of 
archaisms. 



[115] 



IN MEMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 

THERE was a clown named Joseph Grimaldi. 
And when his agile limbs and mobile features 
were stilled by death there lingered in the minds 
of the thousands who had laughed at him in Sadler's 
Weils and Covent Garden only the memory of their 
mirth. 

There was a clown named John Bunny. Now 
he is dead. But we still may see, and our children's 
children may see, the gestures and grimaces that 
made him a welcome visitor in every quarter of the 
globe. For by grace of the motion-picture camera, 
John Bunny's art endures. 

It is art, this power of conveying ideas without 
the use of words, of exciting laughter by actually 
being, instead of saying, a joke. It is the difficult 
and venerable art of the clown, the art of the 
shaven-headed mime in variegated robes whose 
antics drove care from Ceesar's furrowed brow, the 
art of Garrick's harlequin friend, John Rich, and 
of the mirth-compelling Pinkethman, whose "frolic 
gestures" won the praise of Alexander Pope. 
[116] 



IN MEMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 

Of course, John Bunny could play in speaking 
parts. Before he found his real vocation, before 
the motion pictures claimed him as their great 
comedian, he trod the boards of the "legitimate" 
stage, and with no small success. He ran the theat- 
rical gamut from minstrelsy to Shakespeare. 
Annie Russell, Maude Adams, Weber and Fields 
— ^these are a few of the stars whose radiance he 
augmented during the first twenty-five years of 
his professional life. But to-day the regular drama 
offers little opportunity to the true clown, and it 
was not until he appeared on the screen that John 
Bunny reach his own public — that is, the world. 

The word clown has fallen of late years into un- 
merited disrepute. Impressionistic critics of the 
drama attempt to disparage a comedian by calling 
him a "mere clown." They might as well call Mr. 
Sargent a "mere painter," or M. Rodin a "mere 
sculptor." What they mean is that the comedian 
of their discontent is not a clown at all. For the 
grotesquely clad men, with whitened, expression- 
less faces, who tumble about the circus ring, have 
no right to the exclusive jiossession of their title. 
Indeed, few of them are genuine clowns in the best 
sense of the word, for most of them cause laughter 
by obvious horseplay, not by the true clown methods 

[117] 



THE CIKCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

of elaborate pantoniiiiie and striking facial contor- 
tions. 

The greatest comedians have been the greatest 
clowns. Even the most brilhant lines, spoken most 
winningly, fail of their effect upon the audience un- 
less the speaker has a clown's power to act with 
his features. And if a clown be great enough he 
may safely dispense wdtli words — as John lUinny 
did. 

The English pantomime even in Thackeraj^'s 
day had fallen from its once high place. The love- 
ly Colmnbine remained and the sprightly Harle- 
quin and the grotesque Pantaloon. But there were 
songs and dialogue; the entertainment was simply a 
sort of vaudeville, not genuine pantomime at all. 
It was not imtil the huge, clicking camera made 
lasting the gestures of the actors that the art of 
pantomime came back to its own. 

There is a word used by men and women who 
have to do with this great branch of the world's 
amusement w^hich deserves immortality. It is the 
verb "register." An actor registers grief, or amuse- 
ment, or astonishment. That is, he assumes an ex- 
pression which, when recorded by the camera and 
exhibited, will convey his emotion to the audience. 
In that one word there is a valuable treatise on 
[118] 



IN MKMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 

the dramatic art. 'J'he inferior actor is content with 
expressing an emotion. The true actor registers it. 

And what a sense of permanence is in that word 
"register!" Alfred de Musset and many another 
sentimental poet lamented the ephemeral nature 
of the actor's fame. I'hc painter, it has been said, 
the writer and the sculptor, live in their works. 
liut the actor's art perishes with him; when he dies, 
the memory of his expressive face and graceful 
form goes into the oblivion that keeps the echoes 
of his golden voice. 

Well, we have changed all that. The number of 
people who lose their cares under the spell of John 
Jiunny's magic to-day is greater than it was a 
year ago. The motion pictures have made the 
actor's chances for immortality equal with those of 
his fellows in the other arts. 

Knemies of the motion picture (there really are 
such people) say that the humor of such entertain- 
ments is not true humor, but vulgar and barbarous 
horseplay, requiring no art. Anyone, they say, 
can get a laugh, as Charlie Chaplin does, by being 
knocked down by an automobile or by being grossly 
fat, like John Bunny. 

The adequate answer to a critic who makes such 
statements as these is "Go out in the street and get 

[1191 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

knocked down by an automobile." This may be 
the remark which actors (and sensitive producers) 
commonly feel like making to dramatic critics, but 
in this case it should have no tinge of bitterness. 
Go out in the street and get loiocked down by an 
automobile. See if the people laugh at you as they 
laugh at Chaplin. They will laugh at you only if 
you are artist enough to be knocked down humor- 
ously — as Chaplin is knocked down. 

And, as to John Bunny's success being due to 
his fatness, that criticism is generally made by peo- 
ple who never saw "Autocrat of Flapjack Junc- 
tion" or "Love's Old Dream," or by rival actors. 
It is true that your true clown always is quick to 
utilize his physical peculiarities as accessories to his 
acting. The jesters of Marie de Medici made fun 
of their own hunched backs or dwarfed forms. John 
Bunny had as good a right to turn his fatness into 
dramatic capital as Sarah Bernhardt has to do the 
same thing with her slenderness. It is a principle 
of subjective artistic expression — the same princi- 
ple as that by which Heine made his little songs out 
of his great woes. 

But the physical peculiarity alone is not enough. 
John Bunny was gifted by nature for his roles. 
But he would have been a great clown even had 
[120] 



IN MEMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 

he been built like John Drew. He would have 
made his shai)eliness what he made his unshapeli- 
ness — something ridiculously amusing. 

If fatness alone was the source of his success, how 
crowded his profession would now be! But this 
is not the case. Thousands, perhaps, of motion- 
picture audiences have watched Mr. Taft serenely 
cross the screen, or mutely seem to make a speech. 
Undoubtedly, they have thereby been edified. But 
they have not rocked from side to side with unex- 
tinguishable laughter, and thereafter burst into 
shouts of mirth at the mention of the ex-President's 
name. 

No, people did not laugh at John Bunny because 
he was fat, or because he fell from horses and auto- 
mobiles and aeroplanes, and submitted to various 
picturesque forms of assault and battery for their 
amusement. They laughed at him because he was 
fat humorously, because he fell from vehicles 
humorously, because he was a great clown — that is, 
a master of a difficult and important branch of dra- 
matic art. 

The motion-picture producers may not be aware 
of the fact, but they have performed a valuable 
service to the stage in reviving the art of panto- 
mime. The actor in the spoken drama will be less 

[121] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

likely to be a mere voice when he sees his brother 
on the screen act with his whole body. 

Is it possible that the importance of the human 
voice has been exaggerated? Certainly the mechan- 
ical reproduction of the spoken word has not cap- 
tured the world's attention as has the reproduction 
of motion. The phonograph, of course, brings the 
lovely notes of the singers to ears that otherwise 
would never thrill with melody. It has been used 
as an instrument by which a political speaker might 
address at one time twenty audiences scattered 
across the continent, and it has delighted with 
humorous dialogue those who were far from 
theaters. But as an interpreter of great literature, 
the needle revolves impotently upon its waxen 
cylinder. 

There have been successful attempts to synchro- 
nize the phonograph and the motion-picture ma- 
chine, to cause the words to accompany the action. 
It may be that these devices will one day be widely 
popular. But I hope not. For that would destroy 
the greatest value of motion-picture acting, the 
silent but complete expression of thought. The 
motion picture is the renascence of pantomime. 

When Colley Cibber looked through his jeweled 
quizzing glass at a strange dumb-rfiow drama newly 
[122] 



INi MEMORIAM: JOHN BUNNY 

brought to England from merry France, a repre- 
sentation of the legend of Venus and Mars, he said 
that it was "form'd into a connected presentation 
of Dances in Character, wherein the Passions were 
so happily expressed, and the whole Story so in- 
telligibly told, by a mute Narration of Gesture only, 
that even thinking Spectators allow'd it both a 
pleasing and rational Entertainment." It was this 
"pleasing and rational Entertainment" which de- 
veloped into the great English pantomime, which 
popular custom (always fond of tradition and 
ritual) honored by association with the mighty 
festival of Christmas. 

And the English pantomime's greater descend- 
ant is to be seen on many a modern film. Still the 
vivacious lover flees from the comic policemen and 
the irate father, still Columbine is fair, although 
she bears a less beautiful name and has changed her 
airy spangled draperies for a modern garb. 

Why has no enterprising producer given us a 
real old English pantomime in the films, with all 
the conventional characters? What a Columbine 
Mary Pickford would make! And how excellently 
would Charles Chaplin's deft stumble suit Harle- 
quin! There could be transformation scenes that 
would delight the genial ghosts of Lamb and 

[123] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

Thackeray. But who would be clown — now that 
John Bunny is dead? 

The written word sometimes loses its power to 
bring laughter as the years roll by. Topical al- 
lusions, phrases, and sentiments that amuse us will 
bring no mirth to the hearts of our grandchildren. 
But there are certain things that are elementally 
funny, that make all people laugh who have any 
laughter in their souls. And one of these things 
is the face of John Bunny. 



[124] 



THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 

OF course, people still ride on the elevated rail- 
ways. But not the people who used to be 
taken over by their mothers from Jersey City on 
the Cortlandt Street Ferry about once every 
month, and then up Sixth Avenue by the elevated 
en route for the shops. These people now know 
the swift and monotonous tube train instead of the 
rakish ferryboat, the dull subway instead of the 
stimulating elevated railway. And even if they 
knelt upon the seats of the subway car, their rub- 
bers projecting into the aisles and their faces 
pressed against the windows, they would see only 
blank walls and dismal stations instead of other 
people's Christmas trees. 

These evanescent bits of glory lent special de- 
light to aerial journeyings for weeks after Christ- 
mas. For, in defiance of the Twelfth Night con- 
vention, certain citizens were wont to keep their 
Christmas trees in place until February. And, in 
the opinion of the tenants of the third stories of 
the tenements (apartment houses is the more cour- 

[125] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

teous word) which bordered the elevated, the place 
of the Christmas tree was close up against the front 
window, where all the world could enjoy its green 
and gold and red. 

Like nearly all genuine vulgar customs (vulgar 
is used in its most honorable sense) this habit of 
showing the public the home's chief splendor was 
(or is, for undoubtedly firs dressed for holiday still 
brighten some lower Sixth Avenue windows) based 
on generous courtesj\ It was not possible for Mr. 
Tenement to keep open flat, so to speak, at Christ- 
mas time; to summon all Sixth Avenue in to par- 
take of a bowl of wassail that steamed upon his gas 
range. But he performed all the hospitality that 
his ungentle residence allowed ; he placed his bit of 
greenwood with its cardboard angel, its red paper 
bells, and its strings of tinsel, where it would give 
to the greatest possible number the same delight 
that it gave to its owner. 

It is, you observe, in your own psj^chological 
way, the Rogers Group principle. Your grand- 
mother put "Going for the Cows," you remem- 
ber, on the marble top of the walnut table by the 
window in the front parlor. The Nottingham lace 
curtains were parted just above the head of the 
boy who was urging the dog after the woodchuck. 
1126] 



THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 

And everybody who went up or down Maple Ave- 
nue got a good view of that masterpiece of realism. 
Therein your grandmother showed truer courtesy 
than did you when you put Rodin's *'Le Baiser" 
in that niche above the second landing of your stair- 
way. 

The same quality of almost quixotic generosity is 
suggested by the composition of the old-fashioned 
holly wreaths, which, hung in the windows, showed 
to passers-by lustrous green leaves and scarlet 
berries, and to those who hung them only a circle 
of pale stems and wire. Even the lithographers 
maintain this courteous tradition; they stamp their 
cardboard holly wreaths on only one side. And this 
is the side which is to face the street. 

Well, these fenestral firs and hollies exist, and 
they are among the numerous joys of the days that 
follow Christmas. These post-Christmas days 
shine with a light softer, but perhaps more comfort- 
able, than that of the great feast itself. 

Particularly is this true of the first day after 
Christmas — especially when that day is Sunday. 
In England, of course, as in the time of the late 
Samuel Pickwick, Esq., who brought about the re- 
nascence of Christmas, this is called Boxing Day, 
not because it is the occasion of fistic encounters, 

[127] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

but because it is the time appointed for the dis- 
tribution of those more or less spontaneous expres- 
sions of good will which are called Christmas boxes. 
Its more orthodox title is Saint Stephen's Day; it 
is, you know, the day on which the illustrious King 
Wenceslaus, with the assistance of his page, did his 
noble almoning. Says the old carol: 

Good King Wenceslaus looked out 

On the feast of Stephen, 
When the snoM^ lay roiuid about, 

Deep, and crisp, and even; 
Brightly shone the moon that night, 

Though the frost was cruel ; 
AVhen a poor man came in sight, 

Gatherintr winter fuel. 



'to 



"Hither, page, and stand by me. 

See thou dost it telling 
Yonder peasant, who is he. 

Where and what his dwelHng?" 
"Sire, he lives a good league hence, 

Underneath the mountain, 
Over by the forest fence. 

By Saint Agnes fountain." 

"Bring me flesh and bring me wine, 
Bring me pine logs hither; 

Thou and I will see him dine. 
When we bear them thither." 
[128] 



THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 

Page and monarch forth they went, 

Forth they went to«j^ether 
Through the night wind's wild lament 

And the wintry weather. 

We are not old English Kings, so instead of 
having our page bring flesh and wine to the poor 
man on Saint Stephen's Day, we give a dollar to 
the youth from the still vexed Bermuthes who chap- 
erons the elevator in our apartment house, and 
for weeks before Christmas we affix to the flaps of 
the envelopes containing our letters little stamps 
bearing libelous caricatures of Saint Nicholas of 
Bari. Theoretically this last process provides a 
modicum of Christmas cheer for certain carefully 
selected and organized poor people. 

However this may be, the fact remains that the 
day after Christmas is a very good day, indeed. 
The excitement of giving and receiving has passed 
away; there remains the quieter joy of contem- 
plation. And since this year the day after Christ- 
mas is Sunday, this contemplation will not be dis- 
turbed by the arrival of the postman, who, a re- 
lentless bill-bringer, is, like the Greeks, to be feared 
even when bearing gifts. 

And, in spite of the remarks of every humorist 
who ever borrowed from his mother-in-law two 

[129] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

cents to put on an envelope which should carry a 
joke about her to an editor, this post-Christmas 
meditation nearly always is pleasant. It is assisted 
by the consumption of wife-bestowed cigars, which 
(again despite the humorists!) are better than those 
a man buys for himself. It is a pleasant meditation, 
for its subjects are things given and things received, 
good deeds done and good deeds experienced. 

It also contains, this day-after-Christmas feel- 
ing, a quality of reconciliation. Not of reconcilia- 
tion with ancient enemies — this was all orthodoxly 
attended to on Christmas Eve — but of reconcilia- 
tion with affairs, of readjustment. 

On Christmas Day there may have been some 
slight disappointment, some fly in the ointment, or, 
worse still, in the punch. Forgetting for a moment 
that you were just now pictured smoking cigars 
presented to you by your wife, let us consider you 
to be, as you probably are, a young woman of some 
eighteen Summers and perhaps an equal number 
of Winters. It is the day after Christmas; it is 
(although you are unaware of the fact) Saint 
Stephen's Day. Yesterday, although you en- 
deavored to conceal the fact, only revealing it in 
the unnecessary viciousness with which you 
scrubbed the remains of a red and white striped 
[180] 



THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 

candy basket from the countenance of your infant 
brother — yesterday, I repeat, you were annoyed. 
And the cause of your annoyance was that you re- 
ceived from the amorous Theophihis a paltry dozen, 
instead of twenty-four or thirty-six, American 
Beauties. Niow, however, during your post-Christ- 
mas meditation, your annoyance is swept away by 
the refreshing tliought that Theophilus will now 
have twelve or twenty-four dollars more to invest 
in that extraordinary solitaire diamond ring with 
which he purposes to decorate your not too reluc- 
tant hand as soon as people begin to see through 
your bluff of not being engaged. This thought 
cheers you considerably, and you dreamily give the 
aforesaid infant brother permission to consume a 
barley sugar elephant, which makes him very unwell. 
Or, let us, on the other hand, suppose that you, 
who are now reading this inquiry into the theory of 
motives and ideas, are that infant brother himself. 
Your age, we will say, is three, and you are, we re- 
gret to say, somewhat sticky. Nevertheless, your 
frame of mind is, on the whole, more satisfactory 
than it was yesterday. You had in all confidence 
requested Santa Claus to bring you a large live 
baboon. Instead, he brought you a small tin 
monkey on a stick. 

[131] 



THE CIRCUS AND OTHER ESSAYS 

This was a genuine disappointment, as poignant- 
ly felt as will be any more obvious tragedy of your 
adult years. But, like all sorrows of childhood, it 
had the blessed quality of brevity. Now, on the 
day after Christmas, you contemplate with favor 
your tin monkey. One of his legs is broken, but 
he has come off his stick, and is therefore the more 
agreeable companion. Your father's apology for 
Santa Claus — to the effect that the baboon of your 
desire would have walked off with your stockings if 
he had been placed in them — seems reasonable. 
And there is maima for your soul in the thought 
that your father will take you to the Bronx Zoo this 
afternoon, and that you then can show your tin 
monkey to the baboon that lives there. 

This peaceful meditation is one of the most de- 
lightfully comfortable features of the day after 
Christmas. This day has not the concentrated ex- 
citement of Christmas. It is, I think, the most rest- 
ful day in the year. It is not marked, like January 
2, with the shock of receiving bills and the strain 
of keeping new resolutions. It is a delightfully 
lazy day, a sort of sublimated Sunday afternoon. 

And one conclusion which you should draw from 
your St. Stephen's Day meditation is that the no- 
bility of Christmas traditions and customs is proved 
[132] 



THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS 

by their surviving the most unfavorable, even ab- 
surd, conditions of life. It was not difficult for the 
Puritans to destroy the Maypole ; its gay garlands 
never rose from the dust into which their iron heels 
trod them. But the Christmas tree — which even 
more than the Maypole was an idolatrous abomina- 
tion to those of our forefathers who turned "the 
sword of the Lord and of Gideon" against the prim- 
itive red citizens of New England — the Christmas 
tree blooms with new splendor every year. It is 
set up even in the conventicle and New Salems 
which the Pilgrims established, and as its green 
branches glow with their precious freight of scarlet 
and gold, around it dance — tango, in fact — the 
descendants of John Alden and Priscilla Mullens. 

But the Christmas tree and its attendant glories 
have survived an assault sterner than that of the 
Puritans. They are healthily surviving modern 
metropolitan conditions — ^the deadly foe of many 
gracious things. And the mere fact of survival is 
itself beautiful. It is very fine, of course, for Santa 
Claus to clamber down the broad chimney of a 
great farmhouse. But it is really noble of him to 
penetrate the mysterious smokestacks of a New 
York building, and, making some subtle use, I sup- 
pose, of the steam radiator, to visit every apartment 

[183] 



TllK ClUCrS AM) OTllKK KSSAYS 

which hns its coinploiuont of childhcHul. It is :ul- 
niirablo tor a country chiUi to behove in Santa 
Clans; but how nuioh more admirable is the faith of 
the city ehiUl. the faitli which stands the shock of 
the imitation Santa Clauses who strut about the 
department stores and beo- at every corner! 

These things. I said, are natural fruits of after- 
Christmas meditations. And the Christmas tree 
remains-- although the gifts that surrounded it 
have been taken away, it is a plcasanter sight than 
it was yesterday, because it is already a beautiful 
old friend, a friend to whom we are grateful. It 
does not look ridiculous because its great day is 
gone, a.s, for example, a tire-cracker looks ridicu- 
lous on July 5. For Christmas is more than a day, 
it is a season, of which December 25 is only the com- 
mencement. .Ajui as the Christmas tree seems 
plea.santer and more friendly when some of its 
neeiiles have formed little green ammatic heaps on 
the carpet, and when the china angel and two or 
three of the red glass balls have been taken doyvn 
for the baby to play with — so does the Christmas 
season seem pleasanter and more friendly when its 
tirst great fea.st and pageant has come to its joy- 
ous close and become a part of time's rich treasury 
of golden days. 
[134] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 



THE ASHMAN 

People 
An Ashman. 
A Policeman. 
A Little Girl in Geeen. 

SCENE : A city alley. The Ashman is fasten- 
ing a nosehag on his horse, which is harnessed 
to a wagon half -filled with ashes. A Policeman 
is watching him. 
TIME: Noon. 

Policeman 
What do you feed him? Ashes? 

Ashman 

No, I don't! 
I feed him Harps. Come over here, you boob, 
And let him bite your face, he's hungry! 

Policeman 

Aw! 

You're nothing but a Harp yourself, you poor 

Old God-forsaken ashman; Or a wop. 

Or some fool kind of foreigner. 

[137] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

Ashman 

O Hell I 
You make me sick, you big fat pie-faced mutt I 
Get out, you spoil my horse's appetite I 

Policeman 
I'd hate to be your horse, but then I guess 
I'd rather be your horse than you. (EiVit.) 

{A Little Gikl in Green appears from behind 
the tea g oil.) 

Little Girl 
Hello! 

Ashman 
Hello there, kiddo! AVhere did you come from? 
(Climbs to his seat on the xcagon, takes out a tin 
pail, and begins to eat his lunch.) 

Little Girl 
I think I'd like some bread and butter, please I 

Ashman 
^Ul right, old girl, just take a bite of that. 
(Tosses his half loaf donm to her.) 

Little Girl 
There isn't any butter on it. 
Ashman 

No. 
I haven't got no butter. But it's good, 
[138] 



TIU^: ASHMAN 

It's first-Fcate bread, all right. 
Little Giiil ( tossing hack the loaf, from which she 
has taken a bite) 
Thanks very much! Thanks, Ca^jtain Thunder I 

Ashman 

Huh? 
You're a queer kid, all right, and hungry, too, 
To eat dry bread. {Eats some of the bread.) Why 

damn my eyes! God's wounds! 
Here's scurvy provender. (Throws the bread 

down.) And scurvy mirth! 
What, Kate! Dear Kate o' the Green, well met, 

well met, 
Slip up and sit beside me, lass! It's not 
The first time you have been upon this seat. 

Little Girl (climbing up beside him) 
No, Captain, I should know the Royal Mail, 
But when did you take up the coaching trade? 
I had as soon expect to see old Dick 
Throw leg across your Monmouth's gleaming back, 
Thrust pistols in his belt, and gallop off 
To make his fortune in the light o' the moon, 
As to find you, the Master of the Heath, 
The Devil's Treasurer, the Velvet Mask, 
The Silver Pistoleer, the Winged Thief, 

[139] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Sitting with down-cast Sabbath-keeping eyes, 
Sad hps, and nose all fixed for droning psalms, 
In old Dick's place upon the Royal Mail. 
A proper driver for a coach and four! 

Ashman 
Ha' done! God's mercy on us! Let me speak, 
And I will tell you such a waggery 
Will make you laugh and split your pretty sides: 
I stole the Royal IMail! 

Little Girl 
You stole the INIail? 

Ashman 
Aye, prigged it, Kate! Why, here it is, you see, 
Box, boot and wheels, four horses and a whip. 
And on the door King George's coat of arms. 
All mine, good lass, all mine. But for a price, 
A bitter price, dear Kate. For jMonmouth's dead ! 

Little Giel 
What, jMonmouth, best of horses, is he dead? 
O Captain Thunder, never tell me that! 
Why, all the world holds not another horse 
So glossy black, so fleet, so wise, so kind! 

Ashman 
Yes, ^lonmouth's dead. Dick shot him through the 
heart, 

[140] 



THE ASHMAN 

And Monmouth dropped without a whinny. But 
I paid Dick back. O Monmouth is avenged! 
Now, hear me, Kate ! I stopped the Royal Mail 
Last night at twelve o'clock at Carter's Cross, 
Says I, "Stand now! And let me have the bags — 
That's all I want to-night! Hand over, there!" 
Dick pulls his leaders on their haunches. "Why," 
Says he, "it's Captain Thunder! By my wig! 
Just help yourself!" I prigged his pistol belt 
And rode around to look inside the coach. 
I got the bags. The passengers were three. 
My Lord of Bath and Wells— 

Little Girl 
A Bishop, what? 

Ashman 
Aye, that he is ; white wig and bands and all. 
Yes, he's a Bishop. And there was his wife, 
(A big fat monster of a wife) and then 
There was a little wizened-looking thing, 
A sort of curate. Well, I looked at them 
And laughed to see them tremble in their shoes. 
"Good e'en, my Lord," says I, and doffed my hat. 
"How do you like the Royal Mail?" Says he: 
"O good Sir Highwayman, pray let me go. 
Our coach broke down at York, and so we took 
This pubhc carrier, this dreadful thing, 

[141] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

This Royal ^lail. () will you let us pass? 

I must get into Hull by dawn, and sleep. 

For I eonfirm an hundred souls at noon." 

I hstcned to him, Kate, and did not see 

The old fox slip a pistol up to Dick. 

But, bang! Hell's fury! Down fell JMoimiouth, 

dead. 
And off I stumbled in the ditch! Well, Kate, 
Dick aimeil for me, you see, and got the horse. 
And I got Dick. I got him through the head. 
And then 1 joined the Bishop once again. 
"Come out, my Lord, and strip!" says I. ".What, 

strip?"* 
Savs he, and let his iaw fall on his chest. 
"Yes, strip!" says I, and pulls his great-coat off: 
"Yes, strip!" says I, and throws his wig away: 
"Yes, strip!" says I, and pidls his breeches off: 
And there he stands and shivers, pink and fat. 
"Now, jNIadame Bishopess," says I, "pray do 
Poor Captain Thunder so nuich courtesy 
As to ride by him on the way to town." 
She screamed and fought. I took her m my arms 
And heaved her up into the seat. "Xow strip!" 
I shouted to the curate. "Yes." says he, 
"I'll strip," and strip he did. "Inside!" says I; 
They stumbled headlong in, 1 cracked my whip 



THE ASHMAN 

And, whoop! the Mail went rumbling on to Hull! 

Well, just at (lawn we passed the Southern Gate^ 

We galloped down the street and made a halt 

I3eside the Close. "Here's the Cathedral, dame!" 

Says I, and helped the lady to the ground. 

"Unbar the door, and help his Lordship out 

And don't forget the eurate!" How I laughed 

To see the 15ishop and the eurate run 

Stark naked, screaming, to the Chapter House! 

Well, I was off at once and out of Hull 

And never stopped to breathe the nags till now. 

Little Girl 
But, Captain Thunder! Captain! Are you mad? 
They'll have the country after you! Be quick! 
You can't make cover in a coach and four 
As on a horse! Asiiman 

Nay, Kate, rest easy now. 
Red Will is out, and Davy Doublesword, 
And Hieland Jock, and Dan the Drum and Ned, 
And twenty gallant gentlemen beside. 
And they have sworn to keep the roadway clear 
By setting all the lobsters such a chase 
Will scatter them till night. And Ned will blow 
His bugle when the way is safe. Then, whoop! 
I'll rattle off again and fill the coach 

[143] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

With p^cntlonicn oi' fortune, coninidcs true, 
Anil own the road from here to London town. 

(./ honi is heard and a crif of "Fish, tish, fish, 
tine fresh lish!") 

LlTTIJi GlKL 

Down, Captain, loose the horses I There's the calll 
{The AsHiNiAN gets doton, takes off the horse's 
nosebag and unhitches I lie horse from the post.) 

AsH^iAN {getting hack on his scat) 
Now, Kate, we'll gallop off to Aready. 

Policeman {s'liddenli/ entmng) 
Hello there. Ashes, who you talking to? 

Ashman 
Kate of the Greenwood. 

Policeman 
Kate ? You poor old hooh ! 
You're crazy in the head. There's no one there 1 

Ashman {driving off) 
ISIake way there, constable. {Cracks his tchip and 
sings. ) 
Come all ye jolly rovers 

As wants to hear a tale 
Will make your hearts as merry 
As a bellyful of ale. 
[144,] 



THE ASHMAN 

I'll sing of Captain Thunder, 

And his dashing slashing way, 

How he kissed the queen and he cuffed the 
king, 
And threw the crown away! 

(Ea^it) 
Policeman 
WeU, I'll be damned 1 



[145] 



THE BEAR THAT WALKS LIKE 
A MAN 

IT would be a relief to meet a man who would tell 
honestly why he likes Artzibashev and some of 
the rest of the modern Russian realists. It would 
be a relief to have some young radical say: "Yes, 
I know Chekhov is dull and prolix, but then the 
atmosphere of his work is delightfully unwhole- 
some, and every now and then there is something 
pleasantly morbid, like the man with phosphorous 
poisoning in 'The Steppe,' and his agreeable cus- 
tom of eating live fish. And then there's dear 
Michael Artzibashev. Of course his style is no bet- 
ter than that of Laura Jean Libbey, and his plots 
are cheap melodrama, but you can't deny that he 
is consistently nasty. And I do like to read about 
sexual depravity." 

But the young radical of this sort is hard to meet. 
Instead we find the lofty-foreheaded j^oung man 
who praises Artzibashev's psychological insight, 
Gorky's sympathy with humanity, and — actually! 
— Chekhov's humor! Of course he does not mean 
what he says. He likes "Sanine" for the same 
£146] 



THE BEAR LIKE A MAN 

reason that he likes "Three Weeks." But he would 
not dare to confess a hking for "Three Weeks" be- 
cause that book is English trash. And "Sanine" is 
Russian trash. And from the point of view of in- 
tellectual snobbery, there's all the difference in the 
world between these two sorts of trash. 

Now, it would of course be absurd to condemn 
all modern Russian fiction, or to characterize all 
admirers of contemporary Russian novelists as 
hypocrites and sensualists. Americans and Eng- 
lishmen who know almost by heart the great 
poems and stories of Pushkin, who know Lermon- 
tov as they know Byron, and Gogol as they know 
Dickens, who were brought up on the novels of 
Turgenieff, have every right in the world to seek 
for new delight among the outpourings of the 
presses of Petrograd and Moscow. But the sort 
of person who is feverishly enthusiastic over Gorky 
and Artzibashev has discovered Russian literature, 
in all probability, during the few years which have 
passed since his graduation from Harvard. His 
most serious offense is not that he prefers that 
which is evil to that which is good, and praises un- 
true and inartistic work because the worst part of 
his nature responds to its salacious appeal. His 
most serious offense is that he thinks that the Hall 

[147] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Caines and Marie Corellis of Russia really are rep- 
resentative writers, and that he insults a race of 
great romanticists and great realists by calling 
works that are thoroughly morbid and vile "very 
Russian." 

What is the remedy for this unfortunate condi- 
tion? The ideal course to pursue would be, of 
course, to spank the serious-minded young men who 
think that the Russian novel is a cross between 
Nijinsky's dancing and a pogrom. They should be 
sentenced to a year in solitary confinement, during 
which they should be obliged to read daily a very 
thoroughly expurgated edition of all Ai'tzibashev's 
works. This would convince them that it was not 
Artzibashev's "power of psychological analysis" 
that attracted them, and they would return to the 
world sadder and more honest men. 

But this most desirable course has not the virtue 
of practicality. Perhaps some of the more or less 
recent activities of American publishers will so edu- 
cate the public that they will no longer be impressed 
by critics whose acquaintance with Russian liter- 
ature is confined to "Sanine" and some of Gorky's 
plays. Not long ago was published Stephen Gra- 
ham's admirable translation of .Gogol's "Dead 
Souls," a novel which in its rich humor and sympa- 
[148] 



THE BEAR LIKE A MAN 

thetic realism suggests "Pickwick Papers," while 
its whimsical romanticism brings to mind some 
parts of "Don Quixote." It is one of the world's 
classics; no one who has not read it has a right to 
an opinion on Russian literature. About the same 
time appeared Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan 
Ilyitch," a book of short stories by the great novel- 
ist, half genius and half mountebank, who wasted 
his genuine talent in developing a new religion, 
which is merely a grotesque parody of Christianity. 
The stories in this book are compelling, in spite of 
their somewhat mad philosophy, for they faithfully 
reflect Russian manners and certain picturesque 
phases of Russian idealism. Another volume is- 
sued at about this period is Maurice Baring's "Rus- 
sian Literature," the best one-volume work on the 
subject in existence. And it is to be hoped that 
other publishers will publish those Russian novels 
which really belong to literature, rather than those 
which are of interest chiefly to the pathologist and 
alienist. 

But meanwhile the market is flooded with vi- 
ciously sensational works which are tolerated only 
because their exotic quality gives them a certain 
distinction in the eyes of the provincial. Here, for 
example, is Maxim Gorky's "Submerged." Mr. 

[149] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Jerome's "The Passing of the Third Floor Back," 
and Charles Kand Kennedy's "The Servant in the 
Ilonse" "Nvere sentimental, but on the whole, ef- 
fective treatments of a very dangerous theme: that 
of the miraculous reformation of certain phases of 
modern society or groups of indiviiluals through 
the appearance on earth of a man possessing Divine 
attributes. Gorky's plan has a similar plot, but, 
o^ course, he dilfers from the two English writers 
in making vice triumph in the end. The poor 
wretches who have endeavored to regain a little of 
their lost decency are thrust back into the slime. 
The people who make up this typical Gorky offer- 
ing are drunkards, thieves, depraved creatures of 
every kind. They are utterly lost and the author 
seems to gloat over their depravity and misery. 
But then what else is he to do^ He must live up 
to his name. Gorky, you know, is a pen name 
meanino: "bitter," and Alexei JNlaximovitch Pvesh- 
kov feels that he must justify the title he has so 
proudly assumed. But ridiculous aifectation it is! 
It is a5 if ^latthew Arnold had called himself 
"JMatthew Sweetness and Light." 

And there is a translation of Leonidas Andreiev, 
"The Bed Laugh." This was an attempt to Hash 
upon the astonished world the novel idea that war 
[150] 



THE BVIAK LIKE A MAN 

is a very, very unpleasant thing. Mr. Andreiev 
spills gore on every page, and the publisher assists 
him by making the title of the book blood red on a 
black ground. All the characters in the bof)k go 
mad, and the author's utter inaptitude for literature 
turns what might have been passable third-rate 
melodrama into a farce. As a contribution to let- 
ters, and as a i)iece of pacifist propaganda "The 
Red Laugh" is inferior to *'I Didn't Raise My Boy 
to Be a Soldier." 

And then there is Artzibashev: so much boomed 
and press-agented ; praised by the radical magazines 
for his "assault on ordinary morality" and his "des- 
perately poignant artistry"; long-haired young 
men with large eyes have told the women's clubs all 
about him. Well, of course, "desperately poignant 
artistry" means nothing at all, and "artistry" is 
meaningless when used in connection with a man 
like the author of "The Millionaire." He doesn't 
write novels, he merely throws something evil- 
smelling into the reader's face. 

If the scene of "The Millionaire" and "Nina" 
were laid in the United States, these stories would, 
never have been printed. They are without literary 
merit; they are the crudest melodrama, but their 
grossness makes them appeal to the prurient, and 

[151] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

their foreign origin charms the hterary snob. To 
say that they retloct Ihissian life is to insult Eussia 
grievously. They do reflect, it is true, the basest 
part of Kiissian lil'e, the part which no friend of 
Russia or of literature can >vish rcllcctcd. They re- 
llect the gross and hideous bestiality of the lUissian 
criminal class, they retkx*t the life of people who 
have added to their native savagery the vices of 
civilization. They call to mind a picture of the 
Russian people as somethiug at once bestial and 
human, a monstrosity, a night uiare: perhaps the 
thing that Kipling had in mind when he wrote of 
the bear that walks like ii man. 



[152] 



ABSINTIIK AT Tl\K CirKSffIRK 
CilKKSK 

"O KLONCilNG rather to gossip than to IItf;rary 
■^-^ histr)ry, thf- follf)wirig anecdote is nevertheless 
significant when considered merely as an illustra- 
tive legend. A certain I^ondon jjufdisher, it is saifl, 
recently had in his possession a notehr>ok that li.'id 
been found, after his death, among the effects of 
Jjionel Johnson. "I'he poet had scrihbled in it 
memoranda of all sorts: notes for essays, slray epi- 
grams, rough drafts of pfK^-ms. He had alsr; crjpied 
into it, from h(;oks arifl magazines, hits of prose 
and verse that gave him pleasure. Well, one day 
this frierifl said to Jofjnson's Ifjyal friend, Miss 
Louise Imogen Cxuiney — and, by the way, Miss 
(iuiney is not my authority ff;r this story — "Do you 
know, I have found in this notebook an unpublished 
poem by Lionel Johnson! It is very beautiful, far 
better than any of Johnson's published pf>ems. I'll 
rear] it to you." 'J'hereupon he opened the notebook 
and began to declaim : 

[153] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Last night, ah, yesternight, between her lips and 
mine 
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! 

Of course Lionel Johnson, like every other lover 
of good poetry, had felt the charm of Ernest Dow- 
son's now famous poem which is headed by the 
phrase, *'Non Sum Qnalis Eram Bona' Sub Kegiio 
Cynara\" and had hastily copied it in his noteb(X)k, 
perhaps from Dowson's manuscript at some meet- 
ing of the Khymers' Club. The point of this story 
is that the publisher, knowing Johnson chiefly as 
a celebrant of the Catholic faith, attributed to him 
not one of Dowson's poems about nuns, or Extreme 
Unction, or the Blessed Sacrament, but a lyric 
which at least in tradition and phrasing is obviously 
pagan. 

Out of the mouths of babes and publishers ! That 
wise and spnpathetic critic, ^liss Katherine Bregy, 
has justlj^ praised the lovely poetry which resulted 
from Ernest Dowson's return to the faith of his 
ancestors. She has demonstrated, for all time, the 
genuineness of his Catholicism, and made JNIr. Vic- 
tor Plarr's recent sneer at his dead friend's conver- 
sion seem the most futile thing in his entertaining 
but ineffective book. It would be absurd for me 
£154] 



ABSINTin^: AT CIIKSIIIHE CHEESE 

to attempt to acid to Miss Brcgy's interpretative 
appreciations of the "sculptural beauty" of Dow- 
son's religious poems. But, like the simple-minded 
publisher previoiisly mentioned, I find indications, 
if not of piety, at least of normality, sanity, whole- 
sorneness, virtue, in nearly every poem which this 
so-called ''decadent" wrote. 

There are, and there have always been since sin 
first came into the world, genuine "decadents." That 
is, there have been writers who have devoted all 
their energies and talents to the cause of evil, who 
have consistently and sincerely opposed Christian 
morality, and zealously endeavored to make the 
worse ajipear the better cause. But every poet 
who lays a lyric wreath at a heathen shrine, who 
sings the delights of immorality, or hashish, or sui- 
cide, or mayhem, is not a decadent: often he is mere- 
ly weak-minded. The true decadent, to paraphrase 
a famous saying, wears his vices lightly, like a 
flower. He really succeeds in making vice seem 
picturesque and amusing and even attractive. 

Now, this is exactly what Ernest Dowson never 
could do. He was a member, it will be remem- 
bered, of that little band of "esthetic" poets which 
was called the Rhymers' Club. With them he spent 
certain evenings at the Cheshire Cheese and there 

[155] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

he drank absinthe. This is a significant and sym- 
bohc fact. Not in some ominous Parisian cellar, 
but beneath the beamed ceiling of a most British 
inn, still stained with smoke from the pipe of Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, among thick mutton chops and 
tankards of musty ale, in a cloud of sweet-scented 
steam that rose from the parted crust of the mag- 
nificent pigeon-pie, Ernest Dowson drank absinthe. 

Of course it is true — more's the pity ! — that in the 
melancholy years just before his death he drank 
absinthe in places where it is terribly fitting to drink 
absinthe. But this does not destroy the splendid 
symbolism of his act of drinking absinthe in the 
Cheshire Cheese. The wickedness in his poems and 
in his prose-sketches are always as affected and in- 
congruous as is that pallid medicine in any honest 
tavern. 

He tried hard to be pagan. In the manner of 
Mr. Swinburne, he exclaimed: "Goddess the 
laughter-loving. Aphrodite, befriend ! Let me have 
peace of thee, truce of thee, golden one, send!" And 
not even Mr. Swinburne ever wrote lines so ab- 
solutely unconvincing. He said, "I go where the 
wind blows, Chloe, and am not sorry at all." And 
from this lyric no one can fail to get the impression 
that the poet was very sorry indeed. He imitated, 
[156] 



ABSINTHE AT CHESHIRE CHEESE 

even less successfully than Oscar Wilde, the un- 
pleasant prose poems of Baudelaire, and he made 
the very worst of all English versions of Paul Ver- 
laine's "Colloque Sentimental." 

When Dowson took hashish during his student 
days, Mr. Arthur Symons tells us, it was before a 
large and festive company of friends. I do not 
think that he convinced them that he was that sup- 
posedly romantic character, an habitual user of the 
drug. The hashish, so to speak, in his poems is 
similarly incongruous and unconvincing. He was 
an accomplished artist in words, a delicate, sensitive 
and graceful genius, but he was no more fitted to 
be a pagan than to be a policeman. And so, in 
his best-known poem, he uses all the pagan proper- 
ties, all the splendors of sin's pageantry, but his 
theme, his over-mastering thought — very different 
from the over-mastering thought of, say, Mr. 
Arthur SjTnons in similar circumstances — is a soul- 
shaking lament for his stained faithfulness, for his 
treason to the Catholic ideal of chastity. 

He could not write poems that really were 
pagan. He was not a true decadent. And for this 
undoubtedly he now is thanking God. He had his 
foolish hours: he sometimes misused his gift of song. 
But — and this is the important thing about it — he 

[157] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

did not know how to misuse it successfully. The 
real Ernest Dowson was not the picturesque vaga- 
bond about whom IMr. Arthur Symons and Mr. 
^''ictor Plarr have written, but the man who with 
all his heart praised "meeloiess and vigilance and 
chastity," who "was faithful" in his pathetic, inef- 
fective fashion, but who knew at least the fidelity of 
his eternal Mother, who, in Miss Bregy's beautiful 
words, "laid his broken body in consecrated ground 
and followed tliis bruised soul with her pitiful, 
asperging prayers." 



[158] 



JAPANESE LACQUER 

WHAT was the matter with Lafcadio Hearn? 
No American has written prose more deli- 
cate and vividly beautiful than his, nor has any 
one else — ^not even Yone Noguchi — put into Eng- 
lish so clear a revelation of Japan's soul. Yet after 
an hour with "Kwaidan" or "Glimpses of Unfamil- 
iar Japan" the normal reader is wearied and, in- 
stead of being grateful to the erudite and skillful 
author, regards him with actual dislike. 

Why is this? Is it because Hearn had a mor- 
bid fondness for the tragic, and loved to dwell on 
mental, physical and spiritual disease? This is 
partly the reason, yet De Quincey and Edgar Allan 
Poe inspire no such aversion. Is it because Hearn's 
style is too rich, exquisite and precious? Walter 
Pater had the same fault, but Walter Pater is read 
with delight by Hearn's enemies. Is it because of 
Hearn's ridiculous religious prejudices — his hatred 
for the Jesuits, for example? No, Hearn's hatred 
for the Jesuits is simply a bad little boy's impu- 
dence toward his schoolmaster. He had none of 

[159] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

George Borrow's fiery, romantic passion against 
the "JNIan in Black." And Borrow's "Lavengro'* 
and "Romany Rye" were loved even by so iin- 
Protestant a writer as Lionel Johnson. 

No, the reason lies deeper, and is simpler, than 
any of these. Hearn failed, not because he was 
precious, not because he was morbid, not because he 
was prejudiced, but because he had no imagina- 
tion. 

Lafcadio Hearn was, in the worst sense of the 
word, a realist. He had thoroughly the material- 
istic attitude toward life; he could see only the dull 
outside of things, not the indwelling splendor. An 
imaginative man would have delighted in his mixed 
Greek and Irish blood, would have realized that as 
a newspaperman 'he was a member of the most ro- 
mantic profession the world has known, would 
have seen that New Orleans was no mean city. But 
Hearn was so prosaic and matter-of-fact that he 
saw only the forms and outlines of the things about 
him, and so sentimentally credulous that he believed 
that Japan contained greater wonders than Louis- 
iana. Dr. George ]M. Gould, in his interesting but 
unpleasant work, "Concerning Lafcadio Hearn," 
blames many of his dead friend's faults on his de- 
[160] 



JAPANESE LACQUER 

fective vision. But Hearn's myopia was spiritual 
as well as physical: he could not see the soul. 

What terrible results came from this spiritual 
myopia I Of course, its worst result was the un- 
speakable tragedy of Hearn's rejection of Chris- 
tianity for that cruel burlesque on religion called 
Buddhism. But the minor results were many and 
dreadful . . . chief among them was the loss to the 
world of a great writer. 

Lafcadio Hearn might have been a great writer. 
If proof of this were needed, it would be found in 
a posthumously published book of singular inter- 
est — "Fantastics and Other Fancies." This is a 
collection of Hearn's earliest writings, resurrected 
from the brittle yellow pages of old New Orleans 
newspapers by Charles Woodward Hutson. 

The brief essays in this book are as charmingly 
phrased as anything this master of charming 
phrases ever wrote, and they are — unlike his later 
work — imaginative. That is, they are interpreta- 
tions and idealizations of the things naturally fa- 
miliar to Hearn. He had not yet committed the 
artistic heresy of confusing strangeness with 
beauty. He was not yet deluded into the belief 
that romance belongs exclusively to Nippon. He 

[161] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

still was loyal to the traditions of his own civiliza- 
tion. 

The literary value of Hearn's work is not to be 
questioned. No living writer (not even Algernon 
Blackwood) has so great and fiery an imagination 
as had this quondam reporter of the New Orleans 
Daily Item; no living wi-iter (except Alice Mey- 
nell) understands so thoroughly the art of putting 
together a few hundred words so as to form a stinic- 
ture of enduring loveliness. 

It was in 1878 that Lafcadio Hearn, half starved 
and dressed m rags, persuaded Colonel John W. 
Fairfax, owner of the New Orleans Item, to give 
him work. He was called "assistant editor," but 
it may be supposed that the "assistant editor" of 
this little two-page paper did most of the repor- 
torial work. What treasures of glowing narrative 
its news columns may hold can only be conjectured. 
But on its editorial page appeared from time to 
time for several years brief sketches, some whimsi- 
cal, some sombre, all highly imaginative and beauti- 
fully phrased. These, with other writings which 
Hearn contributed later to the New Orleans 
Times-Democrat, Dr. Hutson has searched out and 
brought together in this volume of real charm and 
value. 
[162] 



JAPANESE LACQUER 

Any trivial incident of his daily round, any 
quaint bit of history or legend that he came upon 
in his amazingly extensive reading, would furnish 
this strangest of newspaper men with a theme. He 
saw in some antique shop a faun and dryad pictured 
in enamel on a little golden case, and, sitting at his 
littered, ink-stained desk in his noisy office, he wrote 
the exquisite *'Idyl of a French Snuffbox." Rid- 
ing to work in a clanging street car, he found on 
its floor a Japanese fan of paper, and wrote of its 
unknown owner with a gay fervor surprising in 
such an amateur of grief. Mark Twain came to 
New Orleans, and the result was that masterpiece 
of vivid and sympathetic description, "A River 
Reverie." 

He was not always absolutely original, this ob- 
scure hack whose genius was one day to surprise 
and delight the world. Subconsciously, he remem- 
bered his spiritual brother, Edgar Allan Poe, when 
he wrote those tales of the grotesque and arabesque, 
*'The Black Cupid" and "The One Pill Box." 
Also there are echoes of Coleridge, and of those 
Parnassian Frenchmen whose methods and ideals 
Heam always shared. 

But no Frenchman of his time could match the 
tender humor of "The Post Office," nor were Poe 

[163] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

and Coleridge standing at his elbow when he >NTote 
"Hiouen-Thrang." Those were writteti by Laf- 
cadio I learn himself, by that strange nomad who 
called no one race his own, who looked at lite with 
huge and perilous em'iosity, who gave to most un- 
English .thoughts a splendidly English dress, who 
just missed being a poet, who just missed being a 
mystic, who just missed being happy. 

Already, the "Fantastics'' show, Ilearn was 
hearing the Orient's alluring voice. New Orleans, 
that brave old bright-eoloretl I^atin city, struggling 
with the aftermath of war and pestilence, was just 
the place for a man of his exotic tastes. "I cannot 
say how fair ami rich and beautiful this dead South 
is." he Avrotc. 'Tt has fascinated me." But not 
the venerable splendors of New Orleans, not the pic- 
turesque shores of Crand Isle, could take the })lace 
of the radiant East, to which he continually re- 
ferred, of which clairvoyantly he seemed to know 
himself already a citizen. 

There are sketches in this extraordinary little 
book, notably "Les Coulisses" and "The Undying 
One," which remind the reader, strangely enough, 
of certain i)rose fancies of another son of l^shaw, 
Francis Thompson. A healthier l^afcadio Ilcarn, 
with a broader vision and a tradition more clearly 
[164] 



JAPANESE LACQUER 

English, might have written "Finis Coronat Opus." 
And the thought makes one, perhaps, a little re- 
gretful that Ilearn was so sineerely a gypsy, that 
he was drawn away from the scenes of his young 
manhood to a lovely hut wholly alien land. Of 
course, he wrote beautifully of Japan. But these 
youthful sketches show that Japan was not neces- 
sary to his artistic expression. And to take on that 
strange new culture he had to give up some herit- 
ages of thought and belief that he could ill spare, the 
loss of which, it may be, is the cause of that melan- 
choly, shading sometimes into despair, which per- 
meates even his richest and most sympathetic 
Japanese studies. 

Hearn did not ruin himself as a writer by writing 
about Japan. He ruined himself by trying to be 
a Japanese. Now, one can write about Japan with- 
out being a Japanese, just as one can write about 
hell without being damned. But Hearn was not 
sufficiently imaginative to perceive this. 

So he gave up European civilization for that of 
Japan. His Irish father's faith held all that was 
noble of his Greek mother's pagan tradition, but 
Hearn chose the novelties of Buddhism. He went 
to Japan: he devoted the gifts that God had given 
him, and the technical skill that the Jesuits had 

[165] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

taught him, to the celebration of anti-Christian 
legends and ceremonials. 15iit cherry-blossoms 
bloom only for a season — unlike Sharon's rose. 
And the tragic letters published after Ilearn's 
death show that this fantastic adventiu'er learned 
at last that lie had forsaken the splendid adventure 
first appointed for him. His bitter revilings of the 
people and customs of the land he had spent years 
in praising show that within Nippon's golden 
apples, too, are ashes. 

Ilearn has been held up by the sentimentalists 
as a shining example of humanity's cruelty to great 
artists. He is instead a shining example of the 
minor artist's cruelty to humanity. He was not 
rejected of men. His was not "divine discontent," 
his was the j)ernicious "desire for new things." 
Therefore he becauie merely the maker of fair and 
futile decorations, and he who might have been a 
ipoet, a creator, became a clever wordsmith. 

The essays in this little book of Ilearn's earliest 
work show a strange reseuiblance to the prose of 
Francis Thouipsou. AVhat a contrast the lives of 
the two men present! l?oth were vagabonds, both 
were physically handicapped. But Francis 
Thompson was imaginative enough to be himself, 
so he wrote "The Hound t)f Heaven." And Laf- 
[IGC] 



JAPANESE LACQUER 

cadio Ilearn was so lacking in imagination as to 
want to be somebody else — so he wrote "Gleanings 
in Buddha Fields." 

It is not for a mere journalist to point out the 
moral significance of the tragedy of I^afcadio 
Ifearn. J5ut I venture to suggest that the young 
American and ]^inglish poets who are kissing the 
silken hem of Mr. Rabindranath Tagore's garment 
might profitably read Lafcadio Ilearn's later cor- 
respondence. Fame and happiness are not always 
the reward of liim who gives up the Occident for 
the Orient. Orientalism has its own truths, its 
own splendors. Rut the writers whose words we 
cherish, whose names are graven on our hearts, the 
makers of our literature, did anyone of these sell 
his birthright for a mess of — rice? 



[167] 



SAPPHO REDIVIVA 

OUT of the dust of Egypt comes the voice of 
Sapi)Iu>, as clear and sweet as when she sang 
in Lesbos by the sea, 600 years before the birth of 
Christ. The picks and spades of Arab workmen, 
directed by Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. 
Hunt of the Egypt Exploration Fund, have given 
the world a hithei-to unknown poem by the greatest 
woman poet of all time. 

Of course it is not a complete and legible manu- 
script, this biu*ied treasure unearthed at simburnt 
Oxyrhyncus. It is a little pile of fragments of 
papyrus, fifty-six in all. Aiid on one of them is 
the tantalizing inscription, "The First Book of the 
Lyrics of Sappho, 1,332 hues." 

To piece these fragments together has been a task 
more delicate and arduous than to dig them out of 
the earth. JNIessrs. Grenfell and Hunt succeeded 
in combining some twenty shreds of papjTus, and 
thus in showing the natin*e of the original manu- 
script. And the chief product of their labor and 
skill was a poem of six stanzas in the form to which 
[168] 



SAPPHO RKDIVIVA 

Sappho's name is given, a poem, however, from 
which two entire lines and many words were 
missing. 

Then it was that J, M. Edmonds, an eminent 
Hellenist of Cambridge University, gave his atten- 
tion to the matter. He studied the possi})le rela- 
tionship of the words, parsing and analyzing as 
diligently as any youth whom only the implacable 
Homer separates from a strip of parchment 
marked with the university's seal and his own name 
parodied in Latin. 

"Anactoria," he saw, was vocative — and that was 
greatly significant. He added accents, syllables, 
words, and finally he supplied — it was pure guess- 
work, of course — two entire lines. And the result 
is undoubtedly a close approximation of the origi- 
nal lyric, more nearly complete, indeed, than most 
of the poems which have made critics call Sappho 
"tlie Tenth Muse." 

For Sappho is known only by two brief odes 
and a few lyric fragments — "two small brilliants 
and a handful of star dust," they have been called. 
She wrote, it is believed, at least nine books of odes, 
together with epithalamia, epigrams, elegies, and 
monodies. 

To account for the disappearance of all this 

[169] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

poetry several theories have been advanced. One, 
which is largely accepted, is that Sappho's poems 
were burned at Byzantium in the year A. D. 380 by 
command of Gregory Nazianzen, who desired that 
his own poems might be studied in their stead, for 
the improvement of the morals of his people. 

J. M. Edmonds has contributed to an issue of 
The Clasdcal Review his amended version of the 
poem. He gives also the following prose trans- 
lation : 

The fairest thing in all the world some say is a 
host of horsemen, and some a host of foot, and some, 
again, a navy of ships; but to me, 'tis my heart's 
beloved, and 'tis easy to make this understood by 
any. 

When Helen surveyed much mortal beauty, she 
chose for the best the destroyer of all the honor of 
Troy, and thought not so much either of child or 
parent dear, but was led astray by love to bestow 
her heart afar; for woman is ever easy to be bent 
when she tliinks lightly of what is near and dear. 

Even so you to-day, my Anactoria, remember 
not, it seems, when she is with you one of whom 
I would rather have the sweet sound of her footfall 
and the sight of tlie briglitness of her beaming face 
than all the chariots and armored footmen of Lj^dia. 

Know that in this world man cannot have the 
[170] 



SAPPHO REDIVIVA 

best; yet to pray for a share in what was once 
shared is better than to forget it. 

I have roughly rendered the poem into English 
verse as follows : 

Unto some a troop of triumphant horsemen, 
Or a radiant fleet, or a marching legion, 
Is the fairest sight — but to me the fairest 
Is my beloved. 

Every lover must understand my wisdom, 

For when Helen looked on the whole world's 

beauty 
What she chose as best was a man, her loved one, 
Who shamed Troy's honor. 

Then her little child was to her as nothing. 
Not her mother's tears nor her father's pleading 
Moved her. At Love's word, meekly she surren- 
dered 

Unto this stranger. 

So does woman yield, valuing but little 
Things, however fair, that she looks at daily. 
So you now, Anactoria, forget her, 
Her, who is with you, 

Her, to see whose face, fairer than the sunlight. 
Her, to hear whose step ringing on the threshold, 
I'd forego the sight of the Lydian army, 
Bowmen and chariots. 

[171] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Never in this world is the best our portion, 
Yet there is a vague pleasure in remembrance, 
And to long for joy that has passed is better 
Than to forget it. 

No one would venture to criticize Mr. Edmonds's 
treatment of the Greek text; his ingenious ad- 
ditions are a distinguished, scholarly achievement. 
Nor can any fault be found with his prose transla- 
tion of the poem. But to readers of poetry who 
have not that peculiar literal-mindedness which 
characterizes scholars his interpretation of the 
translated poem, his explanation of Sappho's mean- 
ing, is anything but satisfactory. 

It gives "point" to the piece, he says, if we im- 
agine Anactoria to have fallen in love with a soldier. 
Sappho, he explains, clearly is away in exile. An- 
actoria and the other woman are living in the same 
town, presumably Mitylene. He gives this inter- 
pretation of Sappho's supposed address to Anac- 
toria: 

You, who are lucky enough to be with her still, 
have forgotten, it seems, a friend whom I would 
give anything to see again. For you have fallen in 
love. And yet it is natural enough; and I cannot 
blame you. But O, that I might have the joy you 
are throwing awayl I know it is no use wishing; 
[172] 



SAPPHO REDIVIVA 

but still, past delights are better missed than 
forgotten. 

Now, it is the scholars that have brought the 
poets into disrepute. They insist on interpreting 
them and in being at once too literal and too imag- 
inative. Take, for instance, the obvious example 
of Shakespeare. Plays and poems written for the 
entertainment of the world have been twisted and 
tortured by erudite commentators who have seen in 
them supernatural prophecies, scientific treatises, 
political tracts, and — what is in this connection 
especially important — personal confessions. Man- 
kind cannot be restrained, it seems, from the at- 
tempt to interpret all poetry as rhymed autobi- 
ography. 

Why, it is respectfully asked, does it give "point 
to the piece" to imagine that Anactoria has fallen 
in love with a soldier? Why drag in the soldier? 
Surely a poet may mention the panoply of war 
without having in mind any particular fighting 
man. The poem is simple and direct; it may be 
taken at its face value without the addition of any 
love affair other than that which primarily it 
celebrates. 

Mr. Edmonds is, it may be objected, too imagina- 

[173] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

live when he supplies Anactoria with a mysterious 
mihtary lover. He is perhaps too literal minded in 
the very essence of his interpretation. Strangely 
enough, he seems for the moment to forget that a 
poet is not compelled always to speak in propria 
persona. 

Why should we believe that Sappho meant this 
poem as a personal message to a friend named An- 
actoria? Why is it not possible — even probable — 
that Sappho meant the poem as the utterance of 
someone else, of someone who existed only in her 
own splendid unagination? 

If this were so the case would really not be with- 
out precedent. "My mother bore me in the south- 
ern wild ; And I am black, but O, my soul is white," 
was not (as scholars of A. D. 2,000 may gravely 
state) the outcry of a little colored boy, but the 
work of an elderly English gentleman. Walter 
Savage Landor's "^lother, I Cannot Mind ^ly 
Wheel," was not a personal expression — INIr. Lan- 
dor, as his mother was well aware, had no wheel 
to mind. Shelley was not the daughter of Earth 
and Water and Browning never choked a young 
woman named Porphyria with her own hair. 

No, in spite of the excellent advice that has been 
given them, poets refuse to look exclusively into 
[174] 



SAPPHO REDIVIVA 

their own hearts and write. They refuse to be con- 
sistently subjective, they insist on voicing the 
thoughts of others. Therefore, not all the scholars 
in Christendom and heathenry need keep us from 
regarding Sappho's newly found poem as any- 
thing but what, on the surface, it appears to be, the 
address of a rejected lover to a friend or sister of 
his lady. 

If Mr. Edmonds's admirable prose translation 
be regarded in this light — which surely is the light 
of nature — what is there about it to perplex? That 
Sappho used the name "Anactoria" in other poems 
does not prove that in that shadowy school on Les- 
bos there was a girl so named. It is a good rhyth- 
mical name, fitting excellently into the middle of a 
lesser Sapphic strophe ; why should not Sappho use 
it? Was Pompilia among Browning's acquaint- 
ances, or does E. A. Robinson write letters to Flem- 
ing Helphenstine and Minniver Cheevy? 

Even if, because of the ode which Longinus 
praised and because of other references, we believe 
that Sappho really had an Anactoria among her 
friends or pupils, we are under no obligation to be- 
lieve that this poem was meant for her. Leigh 
Hunt — not to speak of Rossetti ! — knew many Jen- 
nies, but none of them ever sued him for libel. 

[175] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Sappho, whom a contemporary called "the flower 
of the Graces," suffered first from her enemies and 
then from her friends. That "small, dark woman" 
who wrote immortal lyrics and counted among her 
disciples such famous singers as Erinna of Telos 
and Damophyla of Pamphylia, was, after her death, 
grossly calumniated by the ribald writers of Athe- 
nian comedy. Those who believe in the anecdotes 
of her which fill those scurrilous but entertaining 
pages cannot consistently refuse to credit also Aris- 
tophanes's interpretation of the character of 
Socrates. 

If we are to take any of Sappho's poems as genu- 
ine personal expressions, certainly we cannot pass 
by her ode to her brother Charaxus, in which, in the 
most strict, not to say puritanical, fashion she re- 
bukes him for yielding to the charms of the cour- 
tesan Doricha. 

Nor can her correspondence with that Alceus, 
that "fluent poet of fluctuating moods," as E. B. 
Osborn calls him, be neglected. Alceus wrote to 
her, in an ode of which a fragment is preserved: 
"Violet-weaving, pure, sweet-smiling Sappho, I 
wish to say somewhat, but shame hinders me." And 
Sappho answered, primly enough, in another ode: 
"Hadst thou desire of aught good or fair, shame 
[176] 



SAPPHO REDIVIVA 

would not have touched thine eyes, but thou wouldst 
have spoken openly thereof." 

The famous story of Sappho*s vain pursuit of 
Phaon, and her death by leaping into the sea from 
the Leucadian promontory, were, it may safely be 
stated, inventions of the comic poets. Charles G. 
D. Roberts, in his introduction to Bliss Carman's 
exquisite reconstruction of Sappho's lyrics, sug- 
gests that the Phaon story is perhaps merely an 
echo of the legend of Aphrodite and Adonis — who 
is, indeed, called Phaon in some versions. 

But the modem admirers of Sappho have not 
hesitated to accept as authentic such stories as that 
of her love for the mythical Phaon, in spite of the 
fact that they originated 200 years after her death. 
The Phaon myth, however, Sappho herself might 
forgive, because of the literature it has begotten — 
Ovid's immortal epistle and Addison's fantasy, to 
mention only two examples. But it is too doubtful 
whether she would appreciate the eloquent but 
somewhat perfervid hysterical dithyrambs of the 
late Algernon Charles Swinburne and his follow- 
ers. The "pure sweet-smiling" poet who scolded 
her naughty brother and snubbed the ardent Alceus 
was not: 

[177] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song, 
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love. 

Bnt she was a great poet. If it was not ah'eady 
known, the splendid stroplics recovered at Oxy- 
rliyncns would prove it. E. B. Osborn, writing in 
the Ijondon Morning Post, has called attention to 
their resemblance to the Canticle of Canticles, to 
the way in Avhich, as he says, liOve makes Lesbos 
and land-locked Sharon provinces in one princi- 
pality. There is a close kinship between the ideas 
expressed in the first and third stanzas of Sappho's 
poem and those of these lines: 

"I have compared thee, () my love, to a company 
of horses in I'haraoh's chariots. (L, 9.) 

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, 
fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as 
an army with banners?" (V., 10.) 

Lesbos is on the sea, so the picture of the white- 
winged ships came naturally to the mind of Sappho. 
But the poet of Sharon thought only of Pharaoh's 
shining cavalry and of (magic phrase!) an "army 
Muth banners." 

The world cannot be too grateful to JNIessrs. 
GrenfcU and Hunt for their literary mining, and 
to ^Ir. Edmonds for his man^elously ingenious 
[178] 



SArPIIO REDIVIVA 

work of reconstruction. We may object to scholars 
and commentators, we may regret their interpreta- 
tions, but in this instance men of this sometimes 
irritating class have made tlie world's literature 
their debtor. They have recovered, they have al- 
most recreated, one of the greatest poems of the 
greatest poet of the greatest age of lyi-ic poetry. 
It is already a classic, this little song, whose liquid 
Greek syllables echo the music of undying pas- 
sion. It is a poem not unworthy of her whom the 
amazed world called "the miracle"; of whom in our 
own time that true poet and wise critic, the late 
Theodore Watts-Dunton, wrote: 

Never before these songs were sung, and never 
since did the human soul, in the gri}) of a liery pas- 
sion, utter a cry like hers, and, from the executive 
point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high, 
imperious verbal economy wliich only nature can 
teach the artist, she has no equal, and none worthy 
to take the place of second. 



[179] 



THE POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS 

TUiVT Gerard Hopkins is to-day little known, 
even among rhymers, is an inevitable result 
of his manner of life and work. He was a priest 
of the Catholie Church and a member of the Society 
of Jesus. His faith was the source of his poetry, 
but liis arduous labors in its service left him little 
time for celebrating it in verse, and made him so 
indifferent to ap})lause tliat he never published. 
Sir Artliur Quiller-Couch put his "The Starlight 
Night" in the "Oxford Book of Victorian Verse," 
and he is represented in Orby Shipley's "Carmina 
Mariana" and II. C. Beeching's "Lyra Sacra." 
Several of his poems are included in Volume VIII 
of "Poets and Poetry of the Century" with a cri- 
tique by his friend Robert Bridges, and ]\Iiss Kath- 
erine Bregy has made him the subject of an illu- 
minative essay in her admirable book "The Poet's 
Chantry." A scant bibliography indeed for a gen- 
uinely inspired poet, the most scrupulous word- 
artist of the nineteenth century 1 
[180] 



POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God. 
It will flame out like shining from shook foil. 

These opening lines of a sonnet illustrate clearly 
Gerard IIoj)kins' spirit and method. Like that 
other Jesuit, Rohcrt Southwell, he was a CatJiolic 
poet: for him to write a poem on a secular theme 
was dillicult, almost impossible. He sang "the 
grandeur of God," and for his song he used a 
languag'e which in its curious perfection is ex- 
clusively his own. 

One may search his writings in vain for a figure 
that is not novel and true. He took from his own 
experience those comj)aris()ns that are the material 
of poetry, and rejected, it seems, such of them as 
already bore marks of use. For him, the grandeur 
of God flames out from the world not like light 
from stars, but like "shining from shook foil." He 
writes not of soft hands, nor of velvety hands, but 
of "feel-of-prinn-osc hands." He writes not that 
thrush's eggs are blue as the sky, but that they 
"look little low heavens." The starry skies of a 
winter night are "the dim woods quick witli dia- 
mond wells," or "the gray lawns cold where quak- 
ing gold-dew hes." In Si)ring "the blue is all in a 
rush witli richness," and Summer "plashes amid 
the billowy apple-trees his lusty hands." 

[181] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Now, it may be that these exquisite figures would 
not entitle their maker to high praise if they were 
isolated bits of splendor, if (like the economical 
verse-makers of our own day) he had made each 
one the excuse for a poem. But they come in be- 
wildering profusion. Gerard Hopkins' poems are 
successions of lovely images, each a poem in itself. 

This statement may give its reader the idea that 
of Gerard Hopkins' poetry may be said, as Charles 
Ricketts said of Charles Conder's pictures, "There 
are too many roses." No one who reads his poems, 
however, will make this criticism. The roses are 
there of right — all of them. They are, it may be 
said, necessary roses. They are the cunningly 
placed elements of an elaborate pattern, a pattern 
of which roses are the appropriate material. And 
the red and white of their petals come from the 
blood and tears that nourished their roots. 

It is the overwhelming greatness of this theme 
that justifies the lavishness of his method. The 
word "mystic" is nowadays applied so wantonly to 
every gossiper about things supernatural that it is 
to most people meaningless. For the benefit of 
those who know the difference between Saint The- 
resa and JNIiss Evelyn Underbill, however, it may 
be stated that Gerard Hopkins was more nearly a 
[182] 



POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS 

true mystic than either Francis Thompson or 
Lionel Johnson. The desire, at any rate, for the 
mystical union with God is evident in every line he 
wrote, and even more than his friend Coventry Pat- 
more he knew the "dark night of the soul." 

This being the case, his theme being God and 
his writing being an act of adoration, it is profitless 
to criticize him, as Mr. Robert Bridges has done, 
for "sacrificing simplicity" and violating those mys- 
terious things, the "canons of taste." A sane editor 
of a popular magazine would reject everything he 
wrote. A verse-writer who does not know that 
"The Habit of Perfection" is true poetry is not a 
poet. Here it is: 

Elected Silence, sing to me 

And beat upon my whorled ear ; 

Pipe me to pastures still, and be 
The music that I care to hear. 

Shape nothing, lips; be lovely-dumb: 

It is the shut, the curfew sent 
From there where all surrenders come 

Which only makes you eloquent. 

Be shelled, eyes, with double dark, 

And find the uncreated light: 
This ruck and reel which you remark 

Coils, keeps, and teases simple sight. 

[183] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust. 
Desire not to be rinsed with wine: 

The can must he so sweet, the crust 
So fresh that come in fasts divine! 

Nostrils, your careless breath that spend 
Upon the stir and keep of pride, 

What relish sliall the censers send 
Along the sanctuary side I 

O feel-of-primrose hands, O feet 
That want the yield of ])lushy sward, 

But you shall walk the golden street. 
And you unliouse and house the Lord. 

And, Poverty, be thou the bride 
And now the marriage feast begim, 

And lily-colored clothes provide 

Your spouse, not labored-at, nor spun. 

Walter Pater, Gerard Hopkins' tutor at Balliol, 
had no keener sensitivity to the color and music of 
language. Gerard Hopkins' purpose — a purpose 
impossible of fulfillment but not therefore less 
worth the effort — was "to arrange words like so 
niMny se])n rate gems to compose a whole expression 
of thouglit, in which the force of grammar and the 
beauty of rhytlim absolutely correspond." 

There will always be those who dislike the wealth 
[184] 



POETRY OF GERARD HOPKINS 

of imagery which characterizes Gerard Hopkins' 
poetry, because they do not understand his mental 
and spiritual attitude. Perhaps for some critics an 
altar cloth may be too richly embroidered and a 
chalice too golden. Ointment of spikenard is "very 
costly." 



[185] 



riiii.osoinncAT. tendencies in 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 

WHY do ])o()i)lc write poems, stories and 
plays? The obvious and cynical answer is 
that peo])le write because they are paid for their 
writing; the poet makes a ])oeni for the same reason 
that the ear])enler makes a I)eneli, and the (h'amatist 
has no motive other than lliat of the bootmaker. 
Tliere is some truth in this; if people do not begin 
to write because they consider writing a means of 
livelihood they often continue to write for that rea- 
son. Certaiidy it is easy to think of contemporary 
aulliors of whom it may safely be said that they 
have no inspiration save the desire for money. 

Rut the existence of literature is not thus easily 
to be ex])lained. There are so many trades and 
professions easier and uiore profitable than that of 
leMers [\v.\\ he would be a very stupid person indeed 
wlio selected it with nothiug to inihienee him in 
that direction but the desire to make money. 
There is something else beside the perfectly legiti- 
mate desire to make a livelihood in the mind of 
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TKNDKNCIKS IN LITKUATUHK 

the writer; there is soinethinn- that iiuikes him iin- 
derfj^o ])()verty jind other trihulations for tlie sake 
of his craft. 

What is this influence? What is it that makes 
writers write? It is no one thing. The will to 
write is related to nearly all the |)assi()ns, aiiihilions 
and desires of mankind; it is the result of iiisLinets 
immemorial and unehauging. There are those who 
hold a peculiar inspirational theory ahout writing, 
who helieve that an author is merely the instrument 
used by some creative j)ower. In so far as this 
theory eoiju'ides with the truth that (iod is the 
source of all energy it is, of course, sound. Hut 
those who hold it generally base it on some fan- 
tastic idea of genius as a magic, unknowable ])ower, 
irresponsibly wandering through the world and 
selecting at random the men and women who are 
to be through its mysterious spell creative artists. 
It is a fascinating theory, but untrue, being sup- 
ported only by the citation of numerous particular 
cases, which cannot in logic establish a general rule. 

A careful exairiin.'itiou of the nature of genius 
would here be out of place. It is sullicient for our 
pur])oses to consider genius as extraordinary talent, 
and to know that it is by no means the inevitable 
companion of the will to write. The great majority 

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of writers, those who are without skill and those 
wlio produce some interesting and even important 
work, are without genius. Yet they have the will 
to write. And there have been instances of men and 
women of undoubted genius so lazy that they 
seemed absolutely to lack the creative urge present 
in the minds of their less gifted brothers and sisters. 

There would be writers if there were no such 
thing as genius just as there would be writers if 
it were impossible to make money by writing. 
Consider the earliest days when first by means of 
crude symbols chiseled on a rock or by means of 
rough combinations of sounds a man endeavored to 
convey to his fellows some message not necessitated 
by the ordinary conditions of life — some message 
imi)ortant for its own sake alone. What caused 
this man to carve, to chant, to express ideas so 
that they would be intelligible to his fellows? If 
we understand the motives for this man's conduct, 
if we find out what made him a creative artist, we 
shall understand why modern man writes. For the 
motives, emotions, essential habits of mankind do 
not greatly change with the passing of the ages; 
the soul of man has the changelessness of immortal 
things. 

Motives are hard to trace and they are usually 
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TENDENCIES IN LITERATURE 

found in combination. Wc cannot be sure that the 
first writer had only one motive, but we can imagine 
many motives, any one of which would have been 
sufficient to cause his literary adventure. These 
may be indicated as the urge to chronicle, the urge 
to attract, the urge to worship, and the urge to 
create. And all these are related to and possibly 
included by the need of self-expression. 

Among the simplest and least literary people, 
events that greatly disturb the routine of life — 
wars, famines, pestilences, eartluiuakes — seem to 
develop writers automatically. 'J'hc great thing 
has happened and must have a record safer than 
man's fickle memory. So inevitably come the 
chronicler and his chronicle. The demand creates 
the supply. But the desire to ensure remembrance 
of events is not in itself sufficient to ensure the ex- 
istence of literature. There is also wliat I have 
termed the urge to attract. Tlie savage warrior 
may carve on stone or j^aint upon a strip of pale 
bark a record of his own brave victory or ingenious 
escape. This he does to attract the attention and 
admiration of his public, such as it is, to his courage 
and intelligence. And also the mere making of 
the record is in itself an achievement certain to 
bring to its maker the wonder and esteem of those 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

lacking this strange power. And this sort of ad- 
miration, he iinds, conies to him even when the 
things ahoiit which he writes are not his own doings. 
So subjective art conies into existence. JNIan writes 
because of the urge to worship to-day, as he has 
always done. He utters prayers that have been 
provided for his needs by divinely constituted au- 
thorities, and to the unspoken ejaculation of his 
heart he silently gives the best literary form pos- 
sible to him — the directness and passionate sim- 
plicity proper to great literature. He repeats, 
when he prays in accordance with the forms pre- 
scribed by the Church, great literature which came 
into existence originally in response to the urge to 
worship. And in aJl langiiages the writings of 
most enduring loveliness, even apart from those 
divinely inspired, are those which relate most 
closely to Morship — those writings made immortal 
by the love of God. So writers may fultill the pur- 
pose for which they are made by writing — may 
know God better by writing about Him, increase 
their love of Him by expressing it in beautiful 
words, serve Him in this world by means of their 
best talent, anil because of this service and His 
mercy be happy with Him forever in Heaven. 

There is also the motive which perhaps gives 
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TENDENCIES IN LITERATURE 

rise to the common and fallacious idea of the writ- 
er's inspiration — the motive which I have desig- 
nated as the urge to create. Of course the only 
true creator is God, and for a creature to seem to 
create may be a perilous thing, savoring of blas- 
phemy. Certainly the evil egotism of some writers, 
using their talent for the destruction of their souls 
and those of others, is a blasphemous thing. This 
is a matter better suited for discussion by a moral 
theologian than by a critic, but surely it is possible 
for the writer to assay his task of creating a work 
of art the more humbly and the more joyfully be- 
cause it is done in reverent imitation of the Maker 
or Poet of the universe. 

Now, a writer does not analyze or separate his 
motives. They all are related to and possibly in- 
cluded by the need of self-expression. There is an 
idea in the writer's brain which he wishes to put 
into words and on paper. He does so, without 
bothering to try to discover why he has this impulse. 

The existence of these motives, in various com- 
binations, is evident in all literature. The novelist 
wishes to create a thing of beauty, to chronicle cer- 
tain actual or possible events, to attract admiration 
to himself and perhaps to a certain class or race of 
men. If he is a great writer he has also, even if he 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

be not thoroughly conscious of it, the desire to 
worship — he uses his talent honestly and skillfully, 
for God's sake, making an acceptable offering. He 
may write a drama of modern life, a story of 
pioneer days in the Far West, a sonnet to a butter- 
cup, a pamphlet in favor of improved tenement 
houses, a history of the Spanish- American War. 
Whatever he may write, his desire is to chronicle, 
at attract, and to create. And if he be a great 
writer his desire also is to worship. 

The power and desire to influence thought pos- 
sessed by skillful writers has caused the world 
sometimes to regard them as actually the leaders 
of mankind's spiritual and intellectual endeavors. 
Writers themselves are quick to take this point 
of view; we have in America hundreds of popular 
novelists who have no hesitation in advising hu- 
manity about all its moral problems, thousands of 
minor poets who will answer the questions of the 
ages in a sonnet or a handful of free verse. There 
are some reasons for the writers to be justly con- 
sidered leaders of popular thought. As a class, 
they understand hinnanity, and sympathize with it. 
They have the passions and hopes and loves of the 
rest of the world, intensified. Also they have a 
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sense of artistic, or, as it is called, poetic justice, and 
poetic justice usually is Christian justice. 

But writers are unfitted to be leaders of popular 
thought by many disqualifications inseparable from 
their craft. Interested as they are in the rest of 
humanity, they inevitably are set apart from it by 
reason of their exceptional gift. They show their 
sense of this separation, even when they do not 
openly admit it, by dressing and talking and living 
in a manner different from that common to their fel- 
low-citizens. The velvet jacket, the long hair, the 
flowing necktie, the Bohemian studio, the defiance 
of custom and sometimes of law — these things are 
indications of that separation from mankind which 
makes the writer an unsafe leader of popular 
thought. There is also the danger that the writer 
will, if he become a leader of thought, grow intoxi- 
cated with power, and lead thought irresponsibly, 
foolishly, wickedly, having in mind not the welfare 
of humanity but the delight of leadership. To this 
temptation all leaders of thought — politicians, edu- 
cators, investigators — are liable, but the writers 
most of all. 

The proper function of the writer is rather to 
interpret than to lead the thought of his time. 
Seldom does a writer actually give the world a 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

new idea. What he does is to give expression to an 
idea which has lain dormant in the mind of the 
people awaiting his revealing and quickening touch. 
There is a hope or a fear in the minds of men — it 
finds expression in deeds and simultaneously in 
words. The events in a nation's history and the in- 
tellectual and spiritual causes of those events are 
revealed to later generations by the poets and story- 
tellers. The historical development of nations is 
clear to the students of the world's literature. Take 
the American Civil War for an example — we find 
the soul of the North revealed in "JNIarching 
Through Georgia" and the "Battle Hymn of the 
Republic" and the soid of the South in "Dixie" and 
in "Maryland, My ^laryland." No volumes of 
history give us a clearer understanding of the feel- 
ings of our fathers than do these poems. So also 
I believe that the awakening to a sense of the evil 
of the so-called Reformation, that awakening 
which is historically recorded by the events associ- 
ated with the Oxford Movement, found literary ex- 
pression in the poetry of Rossetti and Patmore and 
the other members of the Pre-Raphaehte Brother- 
hood. 

Since the development which history records is 
merely the outward and visible sign of an inward 
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TENDENCIES IN LITERATURE 

and spiritual progress, therefore the proper theiues 
of creative literary artists are those things which 
the professed historians cannot treat — ^the hidden 
things, the essentials of history. So the writers 
whose work endures are those who concern them- 
selves with the interior, not the exterior, of life. 
The great writers are the spiritual historians of 
their generation. Physical man is important only 
in relation to spiritual man. Man by himself, man 
not considered in respect to God, is unworthy of the 
attention of any writer. The men and women 
whose plays and poems and stories endure are those 
who see that one cannot "know himself" if he "pre- 
sume not God to scan." They know that the proper 
study of mankind, and the theme of all literature 
worthy of the name, is the soul of man. 

Literature is a matter of spiritual chronicle and 
interpretation. Therefore its beauty must, as 
Keats said, be truth. The writer approaches 
beauty in proportion as the subject of his inter- 
pretation approaches truth. It is a fact that a 
writer may express an idea which seems contrary 
to the feeling of his time — may praise economic 
justice, for instance, in the day of great industrial 
tyranny, or in general express idealism among ma- 
terialists. But this should not make us consider him 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

an untruthful interpreter. Ideas implicit in the 
people may be explicit in the writer. And again 
the writer may express the thought of a minority 
more significant than the majority. 

The popularity of a writer may be geographical 
or temporal — perhaps numerical would give a 
clearer idea of my meaning than geographical. 
That is, he may be read in his own time by many 
people, spread over a great part of the world's sur- 
face, or he may have the attention of a public which 
is great because it extends through the ages. The 
second sort of popularity is that which the great 
writers receive, and sometimes they have the first 
kind also. The great writer, the universal writer, 
is universal in his theme. And there is only one 
theme that is universal — God. 



£196] 



TWO LECTURES ON ENGLISH 
POETRY 

THE BALLAD 

I BEGIN the consideration of the forms of versi- 
fication with the ballad, for two reasons. In the 
first place, this is historically the correct procedure. 
The earliest English poetry that has come down 
to us is in this form; it is the ballad that, recited 
in the great hall of the castle on a Winter evening 
by some wandering bard, delighted the simple 
hearts of our remote forefathers, strong, rude men, 
few of whom ever tasted the dainties that are bred 
in a book. The ballad gave pleasure not only to 
the lord and his lady, as they reclined in their great 
oaken chairs, but also the chaplain and the men-at- 
arms and the serving folk clustered together toward 
the foot of the table. For the ballad is universal 
in its appeal, it is the most democratic kind of 
poetry. Perhaps it is not the most primitive sort; 
the songs of worship or praise or love which grew 
out of the earliest dance rituals may have been more 
closely akin to the lyric. But these songs must soon 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

have developed into a recital of the deeds of the 
god or hero celebrated; they must have taken on 
that narrative style which is the essential of the bal- 
lad. We may choose to call Chaucer's "Canter- 
bury Pilgrims" an epic, if we will, but even so we 
cannot avoid the feeling that it is a sequence of 
ballads. And after all an epic is nothing but a 
ballad de luxe. 

The second reason for considering the ballad first 
among the forms of English verse is the ease with 
which it may be written. It is the simplest form 
of poetical composition, and the novice in the craft 
of versification will not find it difficult to attain 
in it, after a few attempts, a fair measure of success. 

What is the ballad? Let me begin by saying 
what it is not. It is not a brief song, although of 
late years the word has been generally used to desig- 
nate almost any rimed composition set to music. 
People who speak of some of the j)opular songs of 
the day as "sentimental ballads" are using the term 
incorrectly. They mean, as a rule, "sentimental 
lyrics." In bygone years the ballad was sung, ox 
at any rate recited, to the accompaniment of a harp 
or other stringed instrument. But in modern times 
the Ijnric is almost the only sort of poetry to re- 
ceive a musical setting. 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

Furthermore, the ballad is not the ballade. The 
ballade is a highly artificial form of verse, French 
in origin, consisting, as a rule, of three eight-line 
stanzas and a four-line envoi, with only three 
rhymes in all twenty-eight lines. People with a 
taste for untra-modern spelling sometimes label 
these productions "ballads" instead of "ballades," 
and other people sometimes try to give their ballads 
an archaic flavor by labeling them "ballades." Both 
practices are utterly unjustifiable. A ballade is no 
more a ballad than a sonnet is a quatrain. 

What, then, is a ballad? In "On the History of 
the Ballads, 1100-1500" (Proceedings of the Brit- 
ish Academy, Volume IV), Professor W. P. Ker 
writes: "The truth is that the ballad is an ideal, a 
poetical form, which can take up any matter, and 
does not leave that matter as it was before." But 
this, of course, is no definition. It would apply 
equally well to all forms of poetry. Professor Ker 
continues: "In spite of Socrates and his logic we 
may venture to say, in answer to the question 
'What is a ballad?'— 'A Ballad is "The Milldams of 
Binnorie" and "Sir Patrick Spens" and "The 
Douglas Tragedy" and "Lord Randal" and 
"Childe Maurice," and things of that sort.' " 

That greatest of anthologists, Sir Arthur Quil- 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

ler-Couch, quotes these remarks of Professor Ker 
in the preface to his volume "The Oxford Book of 
Ballads," a book which every lover of poetry and 
especially every member of the craft of verse-mak- 
ing should possess. He goes on to supplement Pro- 
fessor Ker's definition, or rather description, by 
quoting lines from a number of famous ballads of 
ancient days, and saying that the ballad is these 
things also and in proof of the statement that bal- 
lads are diverse in manner and theme he mentions 
as latter-day ballad-makers poets having so httle 
in common as Sir Walter Scott, Coleridge and 
Rudyard Kipling. Thus do Professor Ker and 
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch evade the task of defini- 
tion-making. But they are critics of poetry and 
therefore entitled to the use of escapes and eva- 
sions denied to the author of a text-book. Let me 
therefore say with no thought of originality in the 
saying, that a ballad is a story told in verse. Usu- 
ally it is told in a sequence of quatrains, with one 
rhyme to a stanza, and usually the line is the iambic 
heptameter — or rather the stanza consists of two 
iambic tetrameters and two iambic trimeters. But 
this form is not inevitable ; the only thing inevitable 
about a ballad is that it shall be a story. 

Of the ancient ballads there are many collections, 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

of which the most famous are those of Bishop Percy 
and of Professor Child. But Sir Arthur Quiller- 
Couch's book, already mentioned, is sufficiently 
comprehensive for the needs of the ordinary stu- 
dent of the subject. 

In the preface to this book, Sir Arthur says a 
rather surprising thing. He says: "While the 
lyric in general, still making for variety, is to-day 
more prolific than ever and (all cant apart) prom- 
ises fruit to equal the best, that particular offshoot 
which we call the ballad has been dead, or as good 
as dead, for two hundred years." 

It is hard to understand why Sir Arthur Quil- 
ler-Couch made this statement. In his "The Ox- 
ford Book of EngHsh Verse" and "The Oxford 
Book of Victorian Verse" he had included so many 
true ballads — Rossetti's "The Blessed Damozel," 
and Dobell's "Keith of Ravelston" — which is as 
authentic a ballad as "Thomas the Rhymer" or 
"Sir Patrick Spens." Also Kipling was making 
genuine ballads of land and water, and Henry 
Newbolt was writing his glorious ballads of the 
British Navy. The ballad was far from dead; it 
was no longer the only popular form of poetry, but 
it had not ceased to thrive. And the Great War 
seems to have given English and American poets 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

new enthusiasm for this form so suited to the 
chroniding of deeds of valor. 

I have said that the true ballad was a story told 
in verse. Let me add that, according to the strict- 
est interpretation of the term, the story must be 
told throughout in the third person — ^the narrator 
must be merely a narrator, he cannot figure in the 
tale. This is true of most of the old ballads. There 
are exceptions to the rule, however, notably "Ar- 
chie of Cawfield" and the immortal "Helen of Kir- 
connel." A^or is it necessary that the modern bal- 
lad-maker should take pains to eliminate his own 
personality from his work, the modern tendency 
seems to be toward subjectivity in poetry and the 
verse-maker who seeks popular approval will be 
guided by popular tastes. 

It is true that the very greatest of the ballads 
are those which were written in the days when the 
ballad had not to compete with other forms. But 
in accordance with the principle underlying this 
work — that of exhibiting the work of successful 
modern poetic craftsmen, I will not quote "Sir 
Patrick Spens" or "Hugh of Lincoln" or "Cos- 
patrick" or "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard'* 
or any other classic. Instead, I will call the read- 
er's attention to the work of some of the poets 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

who, in our own time, have been proving the falsity 
of Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch's statement. 

THE SONNET 

I said that the ballad was the most primitive 
form of English verse composition of which ex- 
amples have come down to us, and that it was the 
easiest form to write. I now come to what might 
almost be called the antithesis of the ballad — the 
sonnet. The ballad is simple, the sonnet is com- 
plex; the ballad appeals to the uneducated, being, 
as I said, merely a short story in verse, while the 
sonnet appeals chiefly to those who have a culti- 
vated taste for poetry. It is easy, I said, to write 
a passable ballad; to write a sonnet that is merely 
correct in technique is a difficult matter, and to 
write a good sonnet calls for the exercise of all a 
verse-maker's patience, ingenuity and talent. 

Theodore Watts-Dunton, himself an accom- 
plished sonneteer, finds the sonnet as "in the lit- 
erature of modern Europe, a brief poetic form of 
fourteen rhymed verses, ranged according to pre- 
scription." This definition is open to criticism in 
two respects. In the first place it is redundant, 
since a poem of fourteen lines necessarily is brief. 
In the second place Watts-Dunton neglected to 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

state that the length of the line is arbitrarily fixed — 
if the lines are not iambic pentameters, the poem is 
not a sonnet. 

The first requirements of the sonnet, then, are 
that it shall have fourteen lines, and that these 
lines shall be iambic pentameters. Furthermore, 
the rhyme scheme is arbitrarily fixed, and the num- 
ber of rhymes arbitrarily limited in such a way as 
to add greatly to the verse-maker's labor. 

The simplest form of the sonnet is what is called 
the Shakespearean sonnet, from its use in the 
famous sequence in which the greatest of English 
poets is said to have "unlocked his heart" — al- 
though this does not seem a fair description of it, 
when we consider the great library of books in 
which attempts are made to explain what Shake- 
speare meant in these somiets. This form consists 
merely of the quatrains, rhyming a, h, a, h, c, d, c, 
d, e, f, e, j, followed by a rhj-med couplet. The 
lines are, as in all forms of the sonnet, iambic 
pentameters. 

Obviously, this form presents no real difficulty 
to the verse-maker with a fair degree of talent. Its 
use by Shakespeare gives it a certain authority, and 
some critics, notably Professor Israel Gollancz, of 
London University, say that it is better suited the 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

English language than the more usual or Petrar- 
chan form. Nevertheless, the weight of opinion is 
against this form. Many critics deny that three 
quatrains followed by a couplet constitute a true 
sonnet, and Professor Brander Matthews always 
calls this form not a sonnet but a "fourteener." 
Modern English poets who have written Shake- 
spearean sonnets are few in number. George Eliot 
wrote a sequence in this form, but did not thereby 
add to her fame. In fact, the only notable use of 
the Shakespearean sonnet form during the last half 
century is to be found in John Masefield's "Good 
Friday and Other Poems," which contain a se- 
quence of introspective and philosophical Shake- 
spearean sonnets, so lofty in thought and appropri- 
ate in expression as actually to suggest the work 
of the poet who first greatly made use of their 
instrument. 

The form generally used by poets writing in 
English is what is called the Petrarchan sonnet. In 
its simplest but not its easiest form, this consists of 
a division of eight lines called the octave and a 
division of six lines called the sestet, the rhyme 
scheme of the octave being a, h, h, a, a, h, h, a, and 
that of the sestet being c, d, c, d, c, d. Here we 
have, you see, only four rhymes in all the fourteen 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

lines. An excellent example of the Petrarchan 
sonnet of this exact type is Austin Dobson's "Don 
Quixote." 

DON QUIXOTE 

BY AUSTIN DOBSON 

Behind thy pasteboard, on thy battered hack, 
Thy lean cheek striped with plaster to and fro, 
Thy long spear levelled at the unseen foe. 

And doubtful Sancho trudging at thy back. 

Thou wert a figure strange enough, good lack I 
To make wiseacredom, both high and low. 
Rub purblind eyes, and (having watched thee 
go) 

Dispatch its Dogberrys upon thy track: 

Alas! poor Knight! Alas! poor soul possest! 

Yet would to-day, when Courtesy grows chill, 
And life's fine loyalties are turned to jest, 

Some fire of thine might burn within us still! 
Ah, would but one might lay his lance in rest 

And charge in earnest — ^were it but a mill! 



»' 



This is a good sonnet to study for several rea- 
sons. In the first place the accuracy of the form 
makes it an excellent model. And in the second 
place it illustrates what I have to say as to the cor- 
respondence in the thought of the sonnet and its 
form. 
£206] 



LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

Now, there have been attempts to make a sonnet 
the vehicle of a narrative; these attempts have sel- 
dom been successful. A sonnet is descriptive and 
interpretative in theme, and it must give at the 
very least two aspects of interpretations of the 
emotion, idea, or object with which it deals. One 
of these must be in the octave and the other in 
the sestet. Sometimes the idea is merely expressed 
or described in the octave, and explained in the 
sestet, sometimes the idea in the octave suggests a 
different idea in the sestet — ^the point to remember 
is that there must be a change in the thought 
marked by the beginning of the sonnet's ninth line. 

This we see admirably illustrated in Austin Dob- 
son's "Don Quixote." In the first four lines we 
have a graphic picture of the mad knight of 
La Mancha, and a statement of the effect this vision 
has upon those who are wise in this world. But the 
very first words of the sestet show the development 
in the thought. The poet ceases to describe, in- 
stead he expresses emotion, he expresses his pity, 
his sympathy, his admiration for Don Quixote, and 
his wish that the knight might find a successor in 
our own day. The octave has its climax and the 
sestet has its climax, and the two sections of the 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

poem arc related by the continuity of thought, and 
divided by the contrast of ideas. 

This tyi)e of sonnet was called by Watts-Dunton 
the sonnet of flow and ebb — the significance of this 
term being that the thought flowed to the end 
of the octave and ebbed from that point to the close 
of the sestet. Commenting on this John Addington 
Symonds wrote: "The striking metaphorical sym- 
bol drawn from the observation of the swelling and 
declining wave can even in some examples be ap- 
plied to sonnets on the Shakespearean model; for, 
as a wave may fall gradually or abruptly, so the 
sonnet may sink with stately volume or with pre- 
cipitate subsidence to its close." 

For a verse-maker to give his sonnet this requisite 
flow and ebb of idea, and keep at the same time 
his rhyme scheme accurate is no easy matter. And 
the very difficulty of the form is a strong argu- 
ment in favor of its frequent use by novices in 
versification. If you can write a sonnet that is 
technically correct, you need fear none of the dif- 
ficulties that any other kind of verse-making will 
present. The accuracy and condensation, the con- 
centration of thought, the straight-forwardness of 
statement, which are the distinguishing marks of 
the well-turned sonnet are the most valuable tools 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

which a verse writer can have. In writing, as well 
as he can, one sonnet, the verse-maker will learn 
more than he could learn in writing half a dozen 
ballads or twenty volumes full of unrhymed free 
verse. 

This book is intended for the guidance not of 
poets but of verse-makers. Yet I cannot forbear 
quoting Watts-Dunton's admirable statement of 
the whole content of the sonnet. He writes: 
"Without being wholly artificial, like the rondeau, 
the sestina, the ballade, the villanelle, and the rest, 
the sonnet is yet so artistic in structure, its form is 
so universally known, recognized, and adopted as 
being artistic, that the too fervid spontaneity and 
reality of the poet's emotion may be in a certain de- 
gree veiled, and the poet can whisper, as from be- 
hind a mask, those deepest secrets of the heart which 
could otherwise only find expression in purely dra- 
matic forms." 

As I said, the simplest, and in some respects, the 
most difficult form of sonnet, has for the rhyme 
scheme a, h, b, a, a, h, h, a, c, dj Cj d, c, d. But there 
is a tendency to vary the rhyme scheme in the sestet 
— the octave usually is unchanged. One common 
variation is to have the rhymes of the sestet c, d, e, 
c, dj e, instead of c, d, c, d, c, d. This is the scheme 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

we find followed in the sestet of two of "Three Son- 
nets on Oblivion," by a distinguished American 
poet, Mr. George Sterling. 

THREE SONNETS OF OBLIVION 
BY GEORGE STERLING 

Oblivion 

Her eyes have seen the monoliths of kings 

Upcast like foam of the effacing tide; 

She hath beheld the desert stars deride 
The monuments of power's imaginings: 
About their base the wind Assyrian flings 

The dust that throned the satrap in his pride; 

Cambyses and the Memphian pomps abide 
As in the flame the moth's presumptuous wings. 

There gleams no glory that her hand shall spare, 
Nor any sun whose days shall cross her night, 

Whose realm enfolds man's empire and its end. 
No armour of renown her sword shall dare, 
No council of the gods withstand her might — 
Stricken at last Time's lonely Titans bend. 

The Night of Gods 

Their mouths have drunken the eternal wine — 
The draught that Baal in oblivion sips. 
Unseen about their courts the adder slips. 

Unheard the sucklings of the leopard whine; 

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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

The toad has found a resting-place divine, 
And bloats in stupor between Ammon's lips. 
O Carthage and the unreturning ships, 

The fallen pinnacle, the shifting Sign! 

Lo! when I hear from voiceless court and fane 
Time's adoration of eternity, — 

The cry of kingdoms past and gods undone, — 
I stand as one whose feet at noontide gain 
A lonely shore; who feels his soul set free. 
And hears the blind sea chanting to the sun. 

In these two sonnets, you see, Mr. Sterling has 
in his sestet the rhymes c, d, e, c, d, e, thus having 
more license than the poet of the sonnet in four 
rhymes. He uses the same number of rhymes in 
the final sonnet of this trilogy, but varies the order 
of the rhymes in the sestet, having for his scheme 
not c, d, e, c, d, e, but c, d, d, e, c, e. One objection 
to this method is that it produces, as you see, a^ 
rhymed couplet in the midst of the sestet* 

The Dust Dethroned 

Sargon is dust, Semiramis a clod. 

In crypts profaned the moon at midnight peers ',• 
The owl upon the Sphinx hoots in her ears. 
And scant and dere the desert grasses nod 
Where once the armies of Assyria trod. 

With younger sunlight splendid on the spears J 

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FUGITIVE riECES 

The lichens clin^ the closer with the years, 
And seal the eyelids of the weary god. 

Where high the tombs of royal Egypt heave, 
Tlie vulture sh.adows with arrested wings 
The indecipherable boasts of kings, 

Till Ai-ab children hear their mother's cry 
And leave in mockery their toy — they leave 
The skull of Pharaoh staring at the sky. 

It is seldom that we find such a couplet as: "The 
vulture shadows with arrested wings, The indeci- 
pherable boasts of kings," in the midst of the sestet. 
But there are manj'' verse writers who use the coup- 
let, unrelated in rhyme to the rest of the sestet, to 
conclude the sonnet. This of course was Shake- 
speare's method, but Shakespeare, as we have seen, 
yvas not making Petrarchan sonnets. The great 
danger is that the final couplet will give the conclu- 
sion of the sonnet too much of a snap, too much of 
an epigrammatic flavor. Therefore it is well to 
avoid this device, although it cannot be denied that 
some of the greatest sonnets in the language end 
in a couplet. Some years ago I asked a number of 
English and xVmcrican poets and critics to name 
their favorite brief poems. INIany of them chose 
sonnets, and one of them, Mr. Edward J. Wheeler, 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

a critic of experience and discrimination, for many- 
years the President of the Poetry Society of 
America, selected a sonnet ending in a couplet — 
Blanco White's "Night." It may be remarked 
that this famous sonnet is almost the only one of 
Blanco White's many compositions to escape 
oblivion. 

NIGHT 

BY JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE 

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew 
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 

This glorious canopy of light and blue? 

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew, 
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 

And lo! creation widened in man's view. 

Who could have thought such darkness lay con- 
cealed 

Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find, 
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, 

That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind! 
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife? 
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life? 

Here is another sonnet ending in a couplet, which 
I quote for several reasons. In the first place, the 

[213] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

poet, while using the couplet, has avoided the dan- 
gers of the epigram. In the second place, he comes 
as close to writing a narrative as the sonneteer may 
safely do. In the third place he deviates from the 
strict rules of the sonnet in one important par- 
ticular, which should be at once apparent to every 
student of the subject. I do not refer to the false 
rhyme of "Africa" and "bar" — the deviation which 
I mean refers only to the sonnet form, and has to 
do with the arrangement of the thought. 

BOOKRA 

BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

One night I lay asleep in Africa, 
In a closed garden by the city gate; 
A desert horseman, furious and late. 

Came wildly thundering at the massive bar, 

"Open in Allah's name! Wake, Mustapha! 

Slain is the Sultan, — ^treason, war, and hate 
Rage from Fez to Tetuan! Open straight." 

The watchman heard as thunder from afar : 

"Go to ! in peace this city lies asleep ; 

To all-knowing Allah 'tis no news you bring"; 
Then turned in slumber still his watch to keep. 

At once a nightingale began to sing. 
In oriental cahn the garden lay, — 
Panic and war postponed another day. 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

The deviation to which I refer is the lack of 
absolute distinction between the octave and the ses- 
tet. If the rules of the sonnet were strictly fol- 
lowed, the line which introduces the watchman 
would begin the sestet instead of closing the octave. 

The best form of the Petrarchan sonnet for the 
novice in versification to use in practice is the form I 
first described, that in which the rhyme scheme is 
a, h, h, a, a, h, b, a, c, d, c, d, c, d. But if you find 
that this at first presents insurmountable difficulty, 
use three rhymes in the sestet instead of two, 
as in the two poems following. In these, you will 
see, the rhyme scheme of the sestet is c, d, e, c, d, e. 
The first is a deeply introspective study by one of 
the greatest women poets of our generation; the 
second is more true to the traditional type of son- 
net in thought, giving the subject in the octave, 
and the lesson drawn therefrom in the sestet. It 
is the work of a young American poet whose name 
is familiar to every reader of American magazines. 

RENOUNCEMENT 
BY ALICE MEYNELL 

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, 
I shun the love that lurks in all delight — 
The love of thee — and in the blue heaven's height, 

[215] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

And in the dearest passage of a song. 

Oh, just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng 

This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet 
bright ; 

But it must never, never come in sight ; 
I must stop short of thee the whole day long. 

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, 
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, 
And all my bonds I need must lay apart, 
Must doff my will as raiment laid away, — 

With the first dream that comes with the first 
sleep 
I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. 

CANDLE-LIGHT 
BY THOMAS S. JONES, JR. 

As in old days of mellow candle-light, 
A little flame of gold beside the pane 
Where icy branches blowing in the rain 

Seem spectre fingers of a ghostly night ; 

Yet on the hearth the fire is warm and bright. 
The homely kettle steams a soft refrain. 
And to one's mind old things rush back again, 

Sweet tender things still young in death's despite. 

So, when the winter blasts across life's sea 
Do beat about my door and shale the walls 
Until the house must sink upon the sand, 
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LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

Then on some magic wind of memory, 

Borne swiftly to my heart a wliisper falls, — 
And on my arm the pressure of your hand! 

Here is another famous modern sonnet, in which 
the three rhymes of the sestet are arranged in the 
order c, d, e, e, c, d. 

THE ODYSSEY 
BY ANDREW LANG 

As one that for a weary space has lain 

Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine 
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 

Where that ^aean isle forgets the main, 

And only the low lutes of love complain, 
And only shadows of wan lovers pine, — 
As such an one were glad to know the brine 

Salt on his lips, and the large air again, — 

So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
Men turn, and see the stars, feel the free 

Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers, 
And through the music of the languid hours. 
They hear like ocean on a western beach 
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey. 

This sonnet has been criticized by Professor 
Brander Matthews, not on account of its rhyme 
scheme, but because of its lack of what he calls 

[217] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

tone-color. I will discuss the subject of tone-color 
later, but it may be well at this point to explain 
that this criticism means that the rhymes of this 
sonnet are not sufficiently varied — that "lain" does 
not dirt'er sufficiently from "wine," and "free" does 
not difFer sufficiently from "beach" (the first two 
words being similar in consonantal value, and the 
second two in vowel value) to warrant their use — 
the theory being that the rhymes used in a sonnet 
should contrast strongly with each other — "lain" 
and "hide," for example, and "free" and "shore," 
for example, contrasting more strikingly than the 
words used. This contrast in tone-color, to use that 
phrase, may be noticed in this strongly-wrought 
sonnet of William Watson's. How strikingly the 
sound of "old," in the octave contrasts with that of 
"ing," and how strikingly in the sestet "ove" con- 
trasts with "ire." The poet uses but two rhymes 
in the sestet, the arrangement being c, d, d, c, d, c. 



TO ONE WHO HAD WRITTEN IN DERISION OF 
THE BELH^F IN IMMORTALITY 

BY AVILLIAM WATSON 

Dismiss not so, with light hard phrase and cold, 
Ev'n if it be but fond imagining, 
The hope whereto so passionately cling 

[218] 



LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

The dreaming generations from of old! 
Not thus, to luckless men, are tidings told 

Of mistress lost, or riches taken wing; 

And is eternity a slighter thing, 
To have or lose, than kisses or than gold? 

Nay, tenderly, if needs thou must, disprove 
My loftiest fancy, dash my grand desire 
To see this curtain lift, these clouds retire, 

And Truth, a boundless dayspring, blaze above 
And round me ; and to ask of ray dead sire 

His pardon for a word that wronged his love. 

Of course you will find exceptions to the rules I 
have stated, you will find poets who have combined 
the Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnet. The 
most usual way of doing this is to end the Petrar- 
chan sonnet with the couplet typical of the Shake- 
spearean form, as in Blanco White's "Night." But 
sometimes we find the octave of the sonnet consist- 
ing, as in the Shakespearean form, of two quatrains, 
and the sestet approaching closely to the Petrarchan 
idea. Such a sonnet is "Letty's Globe," by Charles 
Tennyson-Turner, the brother of Alfred Tennyson. 
In this the octave is Shakespearean — rhyming a, b, 
fi, h, c, d, c, d, but the sestet rhymes e, f, f, g, e, g. 

[219] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

LETTY'S GLOBE 
BY CHARLES TENNYSON-TURNER 

When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year, 
And her young, artless words began to flow, 

One day we gave the child a coloured sphere 
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know, 

By tint and outline, all its sea and land. 

She patted all the world ; old empires peeped 

Between her baby fingers; her soft hand 

Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leaped, 

And laughed, and prattled in her world-wide bliss ; 
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye 
On our own isle, she raised a joj^ous cry, 
"Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!" 

And while she hid all England with a kiss. 
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair. 

You will find also exceptions to the rule that the 
thought of the sonnet shall be sharply differenti- 
ated by the pause between the octave and the sestet, 
that it shall flow in the octave and ebb in the sestet. 
John Milton, for instance, certainly the author of 
some of the greatest sonnets in the English tongue, 
blended the octave of his sonnets with their sestets, 
letting, as a critic has said, "octave flow into sestet 
without break of music or thought." Thus, says 
Watts-Dunton, Milton, in his use of the Petrarchan 
[220] 



LECTURES ON ENGLISH POETRY 

octave and sestet for the embodiment of intellectual 
substance incapable of that partial disintegration 
which Petrarch himself always or mostly sought, 
invented a species of sonnet which is English in 
impetus, but Italian, or partly Italian, in structure. 
But these innovations are for the Miltons of our 
literature, not for the apprentices of the craft. We 
must know how to write longhand before we can 
write shorthand; we must know the axioms before 
we can propound original geometric theories. Un- 
til he has demonstrated his ability to write a poem 
consisting of fourteen iambic pentameters with the 
rhyme scheme a, b, h, a, a, h, h, a, c, d, c, d, the 
maker of verses should not experiment with any 
variations of the established form. 



[221] 



GILBERT K. CHESTERTON AND HIS 
POETRY 

GILBERT K. CHESTERTON is an essay- 
ist, a novelist, a dramatist, a debater and a 
poet. But many people — his brother, Cecil Chester- 
ton, did for instance — believe that he is first of all a 
poet. And certainly it is in his poetry that his char- 
acteristic style is most easily recognized and defined. 

Mr. Chesterton and the late Henry James are 
not very often thought of as intellectual or spiritual 
brothers. And yet there is a startlingly obvious 
resemblance between these two writers. Both are 
stylists ; both have thoroughly mastered certain pe- 
culiar methods of speech, and both are, it must be 
confessed, hampered by their undeviating loyalty 
to these methods. 

This is not the place to analyze the style of Mr. 
James. It is sufficient to recall to the reader's mind 
the fact that the author of "The Golden Bowl" was 
not concerned so much with the presentation of ex- 
traordinary ideas as with the extraordinary presen- 
tation of ordinary ideas. And the extraordinari- 
[222] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

ness of his presentation consisted in its thorough- 
ness ; he was not content to suggest the thing or to 
show one aspect of it; he was able, and seemed to 
feel a certain moral obligation, to present every as- 
pect of the thing, to give all its dimensions, charac- 
teristics, origins and possibilities. His method may 
roughly be indicated by saying that it is the oppo- 
site of impressionism. 

Gilbert K. Chesterton's method, which is more 
readily observed and defined in his poetry than in 
his prose, also consists chiefly of the extraordinary 
presentation of ordinary ideas. But he does not at- 
tempt to give every aspect and shading of an idea. 
Rather he attempts to present that aspect of an 
idea which, while true, is sufficiently unusual to sur- 
prise the reader ; the theory being that the attention 
attracted by the unusualness will be held by the 
truth. 

This method is admirably suited to the uses of 
fiction, as "The Ball and the Cross" and "The Man 
Who Was Thursday" show. It is effective in de- 
bate, and in controversial essays on matters ethical 
and political, as is shown by the writings of Mr. 
Chesterton himself and of that school of popular 
apologetics which he may be said to have founded. 
In poetry it is sometimes almost magically effective, 

[223] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

and sometimes grotesquely inappropriate. The 
perfect, and most lamentable, example of the use of 
this method is to be found in a poem called "E. C. 
B." These initials evidently are those of Ches- 
terton's friend, Edmund Clerihew Bentley, the 
writer of detective stories. 

In this serious and, for the most part, beautiful 
poem, Mr. Chesterton tells us that because of the 
virtue of one man he finds something to love in 
every man. Bentley is a man, he says, therefore, 
for Bentley 's sake no man is to be hated. For the 
sake of Bentley's humanity, Chesterton says that 
he loves everyone, the murderer, the hypocrite, 
even — and this is the great climax — himself. 

I should say, this was to be his great climax. But 
the method seizes him, and keeps him from saying 
anything so strongly simple as "I love myself." 
Instead, he says: 

I love the man I saw but now 

Hanging head downwards in the well. 

This is, as I said, the Chestertonian method at its 
worst. Here you find the poet absolutely at the 
mercy of his method, made to say a simple tiling in 
a complicated manner. But this is, it is only fair to 
say, an early poem, and not fairly representative of 
[224] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

Chesterton as a poet. For it is pleasant to see that, 
unlike Henry James, Chesterton has been steadily 
mastering his style, mastering it so thoroughly that 
he can lay it aside when it is inappropriate. He 
lays it aside, for instance, in some of the passionate 
and most effective chapters of "The Crimes of 
England." And he lays it aside in such of his writ^ 
ings as best deserve the name of poetry. 

Like every poet however original, Chesterton has 
"played the sedulous ape to many masters." In 
his stirring ballads of warfare, such as "The Battle 
of Gibson" and "Lepanto" I find echoes of the last 
of the great ballad makers, Macaulay, whom 
Francis Thompson himself did not disdain to imi- 
tate. In his political controversial poems I find 
strong suggestions of a poet whose point of view 
Chesterton is far from sharing — Rudyard Kipling, 
I find also a curious suggestion of Elizabeth Bar- 
rett Browning. Mrs. Browning was Evangelical 
where Chesterton is Catholic in thought, and she 
had a fatal knack of taking the wrong point of view 
in political matters — Italian affairs, for example. 
But she was genuinely a democrat and genuinely 
religious, and it is strange to see how often she 
and Chesterton think alike. There is even a sim- 
ilarity of phraseology, as when Chesterton writes: 

[225] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

The Christ Child lay on Mary's lap. 

His hair was like a crown. 
And all the flowers looked up to Him, 

And all the stars looked down. 

whereas many years before Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning in her poem "The Doves" had written 
of a palm tree : 

The tropic flowers looked up to if, 
The tropic stars looked down. 

Walt Whitman and Gilbert K. Chesterton seem 
a strange combination. But Chesterton himself has 
acknowledged that he found in "Leaves of Grass" 
a great and wholesome inspiration. This seems 
strange to us, for the American Whitmanite or 
Whitmaniac is a pale long-haired creature of many 
'isms, directly the opposite of a robust Christian 
like Chesterton. But in the eighteen-nineties when 
"science announced nonentity and art admired de- 
cay" Walt Whitman's "barbaric yawp sounding 
over the roofs of the world" seemed a healthy sound. 
So in his dedication to "The Man Who Was Thurs- 
day," Chesterton writes: 

Not all unhelped we held the fort, our tiny flags 

unfurled ; 
[226] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

Some giants laboured in that crowd to lift it from 

the world. 
I find again the book we found, I feel the hour that 

flings 
Far out of fish-shaped Paumanok some cry of 

cleaner things; 
And the Green Carnation withered, as in forest 

fires that pass. 
Roared in the wind of all the world ten million 

leaves of grass; 
Or sane and sweet and sudden as a bird sings in 

the rain — 
Truth out of Tusitala spoke and pleasure out of 

pain. 
Yea, cool and clear and sudden as a bird sings in 

the grey, 
Dunedin to Samoa spoke, and darkness unto day. 
But we were young; we lived to see God break the 

bitter charms, 
God and the good Republic come riding back in 

arms: 
We have seen the city of Mansoul, even as it rocked, 

relieved — 
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, 

believed. 

For some reason, it is difficult to think of Ches- 
terton in love. We can readily think of him fight- 
ing or praying, but to think of him making love re- 

[227] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

quires an effort of the imagination. Yet he is hap- 
pily married, and while his love poems are few, they 
are noble in thought and beautiful in expression. 
One of the most personal and characteristic of them 
is that to which he gives the name "Confessional." 

CONFESSIONAL 

Now that I kneel at the throne, O Queen, 

Pity and pardon me. 

Much have I striven to sing the same, 

Brother of beast and tree ; 

Yet when the stars catch me alone 

Never a linnet sings — 

And the blood of a man is a bitter voice 

And cries for foolish things. 

Not for me be the vaunt of woe ; 

Was not I from a boy 

Vowed with the helmet and spear and spur 

To the blood-red banner of joy? 

A man may sing his psalms to a stone. 

Pour his blood for a weed, 

But the tears of a man are a sudden thing. 

And come not of his creed. 

Nay, but the earth is kind to me. 
Though I cried for a star, 
Leaves and grasses, feather and flower. 
Cover the fooHsh scar, 
[228] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

Prophets and saints and seraphim 
Lighten the load with song, 
And the heart of a man is a heavy load 
For a man to bear along. 

Many poets are writing of war these days. But 
they write of war too self-consciously, they are too 
sophisticated, too grown-up. They are so busy get- 
ting lessons from the war, describing its moral and 
social significance, that they have nothing to say 
about the actual facts of battle. But Chesterton's 
war poems are splendid primitive things, full of the 
thunder of crashing arms, of courage and of faith. 
I think that his "Lepanto" is without an equal 
among the war poems of the century. It begins as 

follows: 

LEPANTO 

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, 
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they 

run; 
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of 

all men feared, 
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his 

beard, 
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his 

lips, 
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his 

ships. 

[229] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

They have dared the white republics up the capes 

of Italy, 
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of 

the Sea, 
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony 

and loss, 
And called the kings of Christendom for swords 

about the Cross. 
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass ; 
The shadow of the Valois is ya^vning at the Mass ; 
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Span- 
ish gun, 
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in 

the sun. 
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, 
^Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince 

has stirred, 
Where, from a doubtful seat and half attainted 

stall, 
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the 

wall. 
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird 

has sung, 
That once went singing southward when all the 

world was young. 
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, 
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the 

Crusade. 
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, 
Don John of Austria is going to the war, 
[230] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold 
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, 
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, 
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the can- 
non, and he comes. 
Don John laughing in the brave beard curies. 
Spuming of his stirrups hke the thrones of all the 

world, 
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. 
Love-light of Spain — hurrah! 
Death-hght of Africa! 
Don John of Austria 
Is riding to the sea. 

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, 
(Don John of Austria is going to the war) . 
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's 

knees. 
His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the 

seas. 
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his 

ease. 
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller 

than the trees, 
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder 

sent to bring 
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. 
Giants and the Genii, 
Multiplex of wing and eye. 
Whose strong obedience broke the sky 
When Solomon was king. 

[231] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

If any living poet deserves to be called the lau- 
reate of democracy, that poet is Gilbert K. Chester- 
ton. I do not ba:\ tbis statement so much on his 
serious poems in praise of democracy, as on his 
light verse. In bis gay ballades, full of rollicking 
humor, we find every now and then a bit of shrewd 
satire, a devastating criticism of the false leaders, of 
the hypocrites and tyrants who sit in high places. 
Better than any other writer of our day, Chester- 
ton knows how to drive his rapier of rhyme to the 
very heart of hypocrisy and injustice. There is 
sound social and moral criticism back of the irresis- 
tible nonsense of "A Ballade of Suicide": 

A B.\LLADE OF SUICIDE 

The gallows in my garden, people say. 

Is new and neat and adequately tall. 

I tie the noose on in a knowing way 

As one that knots his necktie for a ball; 

But just as all the neighbours — on the wall — 

Are drawing a long breath to shout "Hurray!" 

The strangest whim has seized me. . . . After all 

I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

To-morrow is the time I get my pay — 
IMy uncle's sword is hanging in the hall — 
I see a little cloud all pink and grey — 
Perhaps the rector's mother will not call — 
[232] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

I fancy that I heard from Mr. Gall 

That mushrooms could be cooked another way — 

I never read the works of Juvenal — 

I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

The world will have another washing day ; 

The decadents decay; the pedants pall; 

And H. G. Wells has found that children play, 

And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; 

Rationalists are growing rational — 

And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, 

So secret that the very sky seems small — 

I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

envoi 

Prince, I can hear the trumpet of Germinal, 
The tumbrils toiling up the terrible way; 
Even to-day your royal head may fall — 
I think I will not hang myself to-day. 

But the poems which most thoroughly justify 
their author's claim to the title of poet are the re- 
ligious poems, such poems as "The House of 
Christmas," "A Hymn for the Church Militant," 
"The Nativity" and "The Wise Men." In the last- 
named poem we find Chesterton's love of de- 
mocracy and his hatred of pretentious scientific dog- 
matism fully expressed, and we find also the thing 

[233] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

which is the basis of these ideas — his deep and abid- 
ing faith. He writes: 

THE WISE MEN 

Step softly, under snow or rain, 

To find the place where men can pray; 

The way is all so very plain 
That we may lose the way. 

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore 

On tortured puzzles from our youth, 
We know all labyrinthine lore. 
We are the three wise men of yore, 
And we know all things but the truth. 

We have gone round and round the hill. 

And lost the wood among the trees, 
And learnt long names for every ill. 
And served the mad gods, naming still 
The Furies the Eumenides. 

The gods of violence took the veil 

Of vision and philosophy. 
The Serpent that brought all men bale. 
He bites his own accursed tail, 

And calls himself Eternity. 

Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed . . . 
With voices low and lanterns lit; 
[2S4] 



CHESTERTON AND HIS POETRY 

So very simple is the road, 
That we may stray from it. 

The world grows terrible and white, 

And blinding white the breaking day; 
We walk bewildered in the light, 
For something is too large for sight. 
And something much too plain to say. 

The Child that was ere worlds begun 

(. . . We need but walk a little way, 
We need but see a latch undone . . .) 
The Child that played with moon and sun 
Is playing with a little hay. 

The house from which the heavens are fed, 
The old strange house that is our own, 

Where tricks of words are never said. 

And Mercy is as plain as bread. 
And Honour is as hard as stone. 

Go humbly; humble are the skies, 

And low and large and fierce the Star; 

So very near the Manger lies 
That we may travel far. 

Hark I Laughter like a lion wakes 
To roar to the resounding plain. 

And the whole heaven shouts and shakes, 
For God Himself is born again, 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

And we are little children walking 
Through the snow and rain. 

This is indeed the beautiful expression of a 
beautiful impression; it has in every hne the un- 
mistakable glow of noble poetry; it is musical, im- 
aginative, direct, and it is passionately Christian. 
It is the sort of thing which makes it easy to under- 
stand why many people, including, it is said, Mrs. 
Chesterton, believe that this great humorist, this 
formidable debater, this brilliant novelist, this sound 
critic, this accomplished essayist, is, before and 
above all other things, a poet. 



[236] 



LIONEL JOHNSON, ERNEST DOWSON, 
AUBREY BEARDSLEY 

IN considering that brief «nd tumultuous period 
in English literature which is sometimes called 
The ^Esthetic Renaissance, it is inevitable that 
three figures should stand out with particular vivid- 
ness. They are Lionel Johnson, Aubrey Beards- 
ley and Ernest Dowson — a great poet, a brilliant, 
but unbalanced illustrator, and another poet, who 
wrote a great deal of rubbish and about four poems 
which are genuine and important contributions to 
English literature. What is the bond between 
these men? Why should they be gi'ouped together? 
They might be grouped together because they all 
three were creative artists whose careers, so far as 
the world knows, ended with the nineteenth cen- 
tury. They might be grouped together because 
they were animated by the same feeling, a violent 
reaction against the hideous scientific dogmatism, 
the deadly materialism of the much vaunted Vic- 
torian era. And they might be gi'ouped together 
because all three were artists, seekers after that real 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

but elusive thing called beauty, a thing which they 
found at last when they had made their submis- 
sion to her who is the mother of all learning, all 
culture and all the arts, the Catholic Church. 

And yet, although the fact that their conversion 
establishes a real and noble connection between 
these three men of genius, their characters and tal- 
ents differ greatly. Only one of them — and that 
one Lionel Johnson — was directly inspired through 
a considerable period of years by his Catholic Faith. 
Ernest Dowson, the poet, and Aubrey Beardsley, 
the artist, became Catholics towards the end of their 
artistic careers, too late for the Faith to give to 
their work that purity and strength which are the 
guarantees of immortality. But Lionel Johnson 
found his Faith almost as soon as he found his 
genius, celebrated it in poems of enduring beauty, 
and left the world a precious heritage of song. 

In his book "The Eighteen-Nineties," JMr. Hol- 
brook Jackson has pointed out the significance of 
the revival of cestheticism which took place in the 
closing years of the nineteenth century, and has 
shown that it was symptomatic of a sort of idealistic 
revolt. The poets and artists were sick of the dog- 
matic materialism which dominated the mind of 
England. Huxley and Darwin seemed to have 
[238] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

dragged the angels out of Heaven, even to have 
torn down Heaven itself, and to have put in its 
place nothing save a dull rational and inhuman 
scientific theory. Against this scientific dogma- 
tism in matters intellectual and spiritual, and 
against a sort of bleak smugness in matters moral 
and social, the young idealists of the eighteen- 
nineties rebelled. Sometimes the thing which they 
advocated was cheap and tawdry enough, some- 
times it was base and vicious. But they were at 
any rate in revolt — they had found at last that the 
religion of science and the morality of merely 
human convention could not satisfy their hearts and 
their souls. 

And there was another phase to the renaissance 
of the nineties — it was a romantic adventure. These 
men were all of them young and ardent. If there 
had been some brave and noble adventure at hand, 
they would have undertaken it with song on their 
lips and laughter in their hearts. They longed to be 
in the daring minority, to battle for lost causes. 
Now, this tendency by itself, this ambition lacking 
a worthy aim is a dangerous thing. So some of 
these young men fell by the wayside, but others saw 
before them the great and immortal adventure, for- 
sook their trivial toys and poses and attitudes, and 

[239] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

enlisted in the shining army of a King more shame- 
fully ill-used than Charles I, more powerful than 
Charlemagne. 

For Aubrey Beardsley I have the greatest sym- 
pathy and admiration. That being the case, let me 
say that for the honor of his memory I wish that 
every drawing that he made, every one of those 
deftly-made arrangements in black and white, 
might be destroyed. It seems to me that he was of 
all the men of the eighteen-nineties the one gen- 
uine decadent. It is not only in such openly vicious 
things as the illustrations to Wilde's "Salome" that 
we find deliberate immorality in intention and ex- 
pression, there is in all his work, however simple 
and even noble may be the theme, as for instance his 
illustrations to Malory's "Morte D'Arthur," a defi- 
nite and unmistakable perversity, a sure sign of 
physical, mental and moral sickness. 

Aubrey Beardsley's mental and moral sickness 
at first showed itself only in a contempt for the 
conventions of art and in especial for the conven- 
tions of proportion and prospective. It has some- 
times been said that it is as absurd to rebel against 
the moral law as against the law of gravitation. 
The first revolt of a consumptive young architec- 
tural draughtsman with an extraordinary talent for 
[240] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

line was against natural law — against the law of 
proportion. The first drawings which brought him. 
any notoriety were extraordinary for two things — 
their admirable draughtsmanship and their deliber- 
ate eccentricities of proportion. He drew nothing 
but monsters — men eight feet tall with microscopic 
heads, women with arms as long as their entire 
bodies. The revolt against the moral law came 
later — the selection of hideously obscene subjects, 
the painful obsession with sex. Then came the sick 
boy's discoveries that after all beauty was no more 
in the weird ugliness he had celebrated than it was 
in the smug conventions of sentimental Victorian 
painting. A few weeks before his death Aubrey 
Beardsley found the immortal abiding place of 
beauty. Received into the Church, Aubrey 
Beardsley repented bitterly his misuse of his tal- 
ents, and plead with his friends to destroy all his 
immoral drawings, of which he was now thoroughly 
ashamed. "Burn all my bawdy pictures," he wrote 
— a dying prayer which his pagan friends utterly 
disregarded. He had striven to find beauty in sin, 
and he knew that this seeking was in vain. For no^ 
he had found beauty, now he had learned to see in 
the lamp which is beauty the light which is God. 
I have said that Aubrey Beardsley was the only 

[241] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

frue decadent of all the literary and artistic rebels 
of the eighteen-nineties. Certainly no intelligent 
person can call Ernest Dowson a decadent. It is 
true that there have been critics, such as Mr. Blakie 
Murdoch, who have tried to throw a halo of wicked- 
ness over this unfortunate young poet, to make him 
seem to be a sort of English Paul Verlaine. But 
Victor Plarr, who knew him intimately for many 
years, has told us that except for the tendency to 
drink too much, which was one of the causes of his 
death, Ernest Dowson was a simple, wholesome 
young man, who smoked large black cigars and was 
fond of playing practical jokes on his friends. 

Ernest Dowson's religious poems have never 
seemed to me to be particularly convincing. I will 
read you one of the best of them and then tell you 
why it does not seem to me to ring true. It is called 
"Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration." 

NUNS OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION 
BY ERNEST DOWSON 

Calm, sad, secure; behind high convent walls. 
These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and 
pray: 

And it is one with them when evening falls. 
And one with them the cold return of day. 

[242] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

These heed not time; their nights and days they 
make 

Into a long, returning rosary. 
Whereon their lives are threaded for Christ's sake : 

Meekness and vigilance and chastity. 

A vowed patrol, in silent companies. 

Life-long they keep before the living Christ. 

In the dim church, their prayers and penances 
Are fragrant incense to the Sacrificed. 

Outside, the world is wild and passionate; 

Man's weary laughter and his sick despair 
Entreat at their impenetrable gate: 

They heed no voices in their dream of prayer. 

They saw the glory of the world displayed ; 

They saw the bitter of it, and the sweet; 
They knew the roses of the world would fade. 

And be trod under by the hurrying feet. 

Therefore they rather put away desire. 

And crossed their hands and came to sanctuary ; 

And veiled their heads and put on coarse attire: 
Because their comeliness was vanity. 

And there they rest; they have serene insight 

Of the illuminating dawn to be: 
Mary's sweet Star dispels for them the night. 

The proper darkness of humanity. 

[243] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Calm, sad, secure; with faces worn and mild: 
Surely their choice of vigil is the hest? 

Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild; 
But there, beside the altar, there, is rest. 

'Now, this is a very beautiful poem. But there is 
nothing in it which might not have been written by 
a Protestant. And there is one note in it which 
seems to me to be absolutely contrary to the Catho- 
lic idea of the religious life — and that is the note of 
melancholy. Ernest Dowson insists that the nuns 
are sad as well as calm and secure, he insists upon 
the fact that their faces are "worn and mild." Also 
he apparently thinks of the convent as a place of 
inaction, instead of as a place of ordered and ener- 
getic activity. Therefore, this poem, beautiful as 
it is, seems to me to be in no way Catholic in spirit 
or in expression. 

But while I do not feel that the authenticity of 
Ernest Dowson's Catholicity can be proved by his 
deliberately religious poems, I do think that in 
nearly every poem which this so-called decadent 
WTote it is possible to find indications if not of piety, 
at least of normality, sanity, wholesomeness and 
virtue. 

There are, and there have always been since sin 
first came into the world, genuine decadents. That 
[244] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

is, there have been wi'iters who have devoted all 
their energies and talents to the cause of evil, who 
have consistently and sincerely opposed Christian 
morality, and zealously endeavored to make the 
worst appear the better cause. But every poet who 
lays a lyric wreath at a heathen shrine, who sings 
the delights of immorality, or hashish, or suicide, or 
mayhem, is not a decadent : often he is merely weak- 
minded. The true decadent, to paraphrase a 
famous saying, wears his vices lightly, like a flower. 
He really succeeds in making vice seem picturesque 
and amusing and even attractive. 

Now, this is exactly what Ernest Dowson never 
could do. He was a member, it will be remem- 
bered, of that little band of aesthetic poets which 
was called The Rhymers Club. With them he spent 
certain evenings at the Cheshire Cheese, and there 
he drank absinthe. This is a significant and sym- 
bolic fact. Not in some ominous Parisian cellar, 
but beneath the beamed ceiling of a most British 
inn, still stained with smoke from the pipe of Dr. 
Samuel Johnson, among thick mutton chops and 
tankards of musty ale, in a cloud of sweet-scented 
steam that rose from the parted crust of the mag- 
nificent pigeon pie, Ernest Dowson drank absinthe. 

There is splendid symbolism in Ernest Dowson's 

[245] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

act of drinking absinthe in the Cheshire Cheese. 
The wickedness in his poems and his prose sketches 
is always as affected and incongruous as is that 
pallid medicine in any honest tavern. 

He tried hard to be pagan. In the manner of 
]Mr. Swinburne, he exclaims: "Goddess the laugh- 
ter-loving, Aphrodite, Aphrodite, befriend! Let 
me have peace of thee, truce of thee, golden one, 
send!" And not even INIr. Swinburne ever wrote 
lines so absolutely unconvincing. He said "I go 
where the wind blows, Chloe, and am not sorry at 
all." And from this lyric no one can fail to get the 
impression that the poet was very sorry indeed. 

Ernest Dowson was an accomplished artist in 
words, a delicate sensitive and graceful genius, but 
he was no more fitted to be a pagan than to be a 
policeman. And so, in his best known poems, he 
uses all the pagan properties, all the splendors of 
sin's pageantry, but his theme, his overmastering 
thoughts, is a soul-shaking lament for his stained 
faithfulness, for his treason to the Catholic ideal of 
chastity. 

Ernest Dowson could not write poems that really 
were pagan. He was not a true decadent. And 
for this undoubtedly he now is thanking God. He 
had his foolish hours : he sometimes misused his gift 
[246] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

of song. But — and this is the important thing 
about it — he did not know how to misuse it suc- 
cessfully. The real Ernest Dowson was not the 
picturesque vagabond about whom Mr. Blackie 
Murdoch has written, but the man who with all his 
heart praised "meekness and vigilance and chas- 
tity," who "was faithful" in his pathetic ineffective 
fashion, who knew at last the fidelity of his eternal 
Mother, who, in Katherine Bregy's beautiful words, 
"laid his broken body in consecrated ground and 
followed his bruised soul, with her pitiful asperging 
prayers." 

In considering the eccentricities of "The Savoy" 
and "The Yellow Book," in considering all the liter- 
ary and artistic artificialities of the eighteen-nine- 
ties, it seems to me that one real value of the cult of 
peacocks and green carnations, of artificial pagan- 
ism and soj^histicated loveliness, is that it furnishes 
a splendidly contrasting background for the white 
genius of Lionel Johnson. 

This aristocratic and wealthy young Oxford 
graduate might so easily have become an aesthete 
and nothing more! His environment, many of his 
friendships, even his discipleship, as it may be 
called, to Walter Pater might naturally be ex- 
pected to cause him to develop into a mere dilet- 

[247] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

tante, interested only in delicate and superficial 
beauty, having, by way of moral code, an earnest 
desire to live up to his blue chine. 

Instead, what was Lionel Johnson? He was a 
sound and accomplished scholar, writing Latin 
hymns that for their grace and authentic ecclesias- 
tical style might stand beside those of Adam of St. 
Victor or of St. Bernard himself. Nor was he less 
deft in his manipulation of the style of the classical 
authors, as many graceful lines show. And this, 
remember, was at a time when Latin was most ab- 
solutely a dead language to most young English 
poets, whose attention was given entirely to the pic- 
turesque attractions of the Parisian argot beloved 
of the decadents. 

The aesthetic movement of the eighteen-nineties 
was merely a search for beauty — merely a revolt 
against Victorian agnosticism and materialism. 
Johnson found the adventure which all the young 
poets and artists were seeking; he knew that the 
onlj^ answer to their question was the Catholic Faith. 

The atmosphere of the literary world in which 
he lived seems to have had no effect upon Lionel 
Johnson's mind and soul. He was "of the centre" 
not "of the movement." He gladly accepted the 
gracious traditions of EngHsh poetry. He fol- 
[248] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEAHDSLEY 

lowed the time-hallowed conventions of his craft as 
faithfully as did Tennyson. He had no desire to 
toss Milton's wreath either to Whitman or to 
Baudelaire. 

But these virtues are perhaps chiefly negative. 
Almost the same thing might be said of many 
poets, of the late Stephen Phillips, for example, 
who certainly was an honest traditionalist, unin- 
fluenced by decadence or astheticism. But Lionel 
Johnson had also (what Stephen Phillips lacked) a 
great and beautiful philosophy. And his philoso- 
phy was true. He was so fortunate as to hold the 
Catholic Faith. This Faith inspired his best poems, 
shines through them and makes them, as the word 
is used, immortal. 

While Lionel Johnson was not exclusively a de- 
votional and religious poet, the theme which he sang 
with the most splendid passion and the most con- 
summate art was the Catholic Church. This was 
the great influence in his life; it is to this that his 
poetry owes most of its enduring beauty. But 
there were other influences, there were other things 
which claimed, to a less degree, his devotion. One 
of these is Ireland. 

Lionel Johnson's chivalrous loyalty to Ireland 
was not without its quaint humor. He was de- 

[249] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

scended from the severe and brutal general who 
savagely put down the insurrection of 1798. But 
he by no means shared his ancestor's views in Irish 
matters; he was an enthusiastic advocate of Irish 
freedom and a devoted lover of everything Irish. 
Although he hailed with delight the revival of 
ancient Celtic customs and the ancient Celtic 
language, Lionel Johnson was far from being what 
we have come to call a neo-Celt. He did not spend 
his time in writing elaborately annotated chants 
in praise of Cuchulain and Deidre and Oengus, and 
other creatures of legend; the attempt to rees- 
tablish Ireland's ancient paganism seemed to him 
singularly unintelligent. He saw that the greatest 
glory of Ireland is her fidelity to the Catholic Faith, 
a fidelity which countless cruel persecutions have 
only strengthened. And so when he wrote of Ire- 
land's dead, he did not see them entering into some 
Ossianic land of dead warriors. Instead he wrote: 

For their loyal love, nought less. 
Than the stress of death sufficed: 

Now with Christ, in blessedness, 
Triumph they, imparadised. 

Similarly, in what is generally considered to be 
his greatest poem, the majestic and passionate "Ire- 
[250] 



JOHNSON, DOWSON AND BEARDSLEY 

land," his most joyous vision is that of the "Bright 
souls of Saints, glad choirs of intercession from the 
Gael," and he concludes with this splendid prayer: 

O Rose! O Lily! O Lady full of grace! 

O Mary Mother! O Mary Maid! hear thou. 
Glory of Angels! Pity, and turn they face. 

Praying thy Son, even as we pray thee now. 
For thy dear sake to set thine Ireland free: 

Pray thou thy Little Child! 
Ah! who can help her, but in mercy He? 

Pray then, pray thou for Ireland, Mother mild! 
O heart of Mary! Pray the Sacred Heart: 
His, at Whose word depart 

Sorrows and hates, home to Hell's waste and 
wild. 

Lionel Johnson was, as Miss Louise Imogen 
Guiney has written, "a tower of wholesomeness in 
the decadence which his short life spanned." His 
purely secular poems are best when his Catholic 
Faith, seemingly without his willing it, unexpected- 
ly shines out in a splendor of radiant phrases. 
And of all his poems, those which constitute his 
most important contributions to literature, are 
those which are directly the fruit of his religious ex- 
periences or of his love for Ireland. He was not so 
great a poet as Francis Thompson. He never 

[251] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

wrote a poem that will stand comparison with "The 
Hound of Heaven" or the "Orient Ode." But the 
sum of the beauty in all his work is great, and his 
poetry is, on the whole, more companionable than 
that of Francis Thompson ; it is more human, more 
personal, more intimate. 

And to at least two of Lionel Johnson's poems, 
the adjective "great" may, by every sound critical 
standard, safely be applied. One of these is the 
"Dark Angel," a masterly study of the psychology 
of temptation, written in stanzas that glow with 
feeling, that are the direct and passionate utter- 
ance of the poet's soul, and yet are as polished and 
accurate as if their author's only purpose had been 
to make a thing of beauty. The other is "Te 
Martyrum Candidatus," a poem which may with- 
out question be given its place in any anthology 
which contains "Burning Babe," "The Kings," and 
Crashaw's "Hymn to St. Teresa." It has seemed 
to me that these brave and beautiful lines, which 
have for their inspiration the love of God, and echo 
with their chiming syllables the hoof -beats of horses 
bearing knights to God's battles, might serve as a 
fitting epitaph for the accomplished scholar, the 
true poet, the noble and kindly Catholic gentleman 
who wrote them. 
[252] 



SWINBURNE AND FRANCIS 
THOMPSON 

I FEEL a certain diffidence in approaching the 
subject of Francis Thompson before such an 
audience as this. For I know that there are many 
among you who could teach me much about that 
great poet, the modern laureate of the Catholic 
Church. I suppose that many of you have studied 
the profound philosophy of "From the Night of 
Forebeing," "The Mistress of Vision" and "The 
Hound of Heaven," have curiously examined the 
beautiful verbal intricacies of "Sister Songs" and 
"The Orient Ode," and are familiar with the tri- 
umphs and the tragedies of Francis Thompson's 
brief life. 

But there may be some among you to whom 
Francis Thompson is little more than a name. To 
such let me say that Francis Thompson was bom 
of Catholic parents in Lancashire, England, in 
1859, that he died, fortified by the last rites of the 
Church he loved, at the age of forty-eight, that 
most of his life was spent in poverty and ill-health, 

[253] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

that he was subject to terrible and persistent temp- 
tations, but remained faithful to the Church, and 
made in the Church's honor some of the greatest 
poems in the English language. I compare him to 
a contemporary poet, Algernon Charles Swin- 
burne, chiefly because Swinburne was the poet of 
Paganism as Francis Thompson was the poet of 
Catholicity, because their careers present interest- 
ing resemblances as well as interesting contrasts, 
and because both are what is called "Victorian" 
poets. 

Now, in this connection let me ask you if you ever 
seriously considered the advantages of living in a 
Republic, of living, for example, in the United 
States of America instead of in England? There 
is, for example, the recurrent excitement of chang- 
ing the president once every four years, of having 
every so often a new chief executive on whom to 
vent your enthusiastic affection or your enthusiastic 
loathing. A president is a wonderful safety-valve 
for the pent-up feelings of a nation. The suffrage, 
the right to vote, must be a golden privilege in- 
deed, otherwise so many members of the wiser sex 
would not pursue it with such zeal and devotion. 

But the advantage of living in a Republic to 
svhich I desire particularly to call your attention 
[254] 



SWINBURNE ANlD THOMPSON 

this afternoon is the advantage of escaping from 
the custom of calling periods of artistic and literary 
endeavor after the sovereigns who happened to rule 
during them. You never hear James Whitcomb 
Riley or Edwin Markham spoken of as Wilsonian 
poets. But you do hear Ben Jonson called an 
Elizabethan poet, which is just as absurd. You 
never hear Bryant and Whittier called poets of the 
Lincoln period. But you do hear such utterly dis- 
similar poets as Algernon Charles Swinburne and 
Francis Thompson spoken of as Victorian poets. 

Why is this ? Why is the Elizabethan era? Why 
should the age that glowed with the deathless 
flames of Shakespeare's genius, that echoed with 
Ben Jonson's lyric laughter, that was pierced by 
the poignant music of Robert Southwell, the 
martyred Jesuit poet, be named after Elizabeth, 
the persecutor of the saints, the vain and selfish and 
cruel woman who then occupied England's throne, 
to England's lasting shame? 

And why are we to-day considering, in Swin- 
burne and Francis Thompson, two Victorian poets? 
Why Victorian? Of course. Queen Victoria was 
a good wife and mother, a noble gentlewoman. I 
think that we all like everything that we know 
about Queen Victoria except perhaps her politics. 

[255] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

But why should the name of this estimable 
woman be used to designate the intellectual and 
spiritual life of the time during which she ruled, 
a life from which she was as remote as was the 
Queen of Sheba? AVhy should we give the placid 
name Victorian to that time of \'iolent sin and 
violent virtue, of passionate infidelity and passion- 
ate faith, that time which produced the Darwinian 
theory, and the Oxford JNIovement, which produced 
the cruel reigii of dogmatic science and the Catholic 
renascence, which produced the poetry of Algernon 
Charles Swinburne and the poetry of Francis 
Thompson ? 

The combination of these two names may strike 
you as unusual. You know that Swinburne was 
what is called a Pagan, that he hated all forms of 
Christianity and especially the Catholic Church. 
You know also that Francis Thompson was the 
Church's poet-laureate, the greatest Catholic poet 
of modern times. And you wonder why Swinburne 
and Francis Thompson should be mentioned in 
the same breath. 

Well, great as are the differences between these 
poets, the resemblances are striking. It is true that 
when Swinburne was at the height of his fame, 
Francis Thompson was running errands and hold- 
[256] 



SWINBURNE AND THOMPSON 

ing horses in the London streets, his genius prac- 
tically unknown. Yet he was famous before Swin- 
burne's death, and there are other points of contact 
beside that of time between this militant pagan and 
this militant Christian. 

In the first place, both were poets. Both had 
genuine talent, and both had a strong desire to do 
the work of the poet, that is, to find beauty and to 
bind beauty with a chain of linked rhyme. 

Now the poet's search for beauty often is diffi- 
cult, and it was especially difficult in London in the 
latter days of the nineteenth century. All the poets 
were seeking for beauty, but the scientists had been 
industriously trying to drive beauty out of the 
world. Of course, they had not succeeded, any 
more than the French Atheist succeeded a few 
years ago in carrjang out his blasphemous threat of 
putting out that light in the heavens. But they had 
thrown a veil over the face of beauty, and made 
beauty hard to see except for those who looked with 
the strong eyes of faith. 

How the poets worried! Where had beauty 
flown? Browning thought that beauty was in 
humanity. So he searched for beauty in human- 
ity, and in his search made many interesting and 
noble poems. Tennyson, that magnificent artist in 

[257] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

words, thought that beauty was somewhere in evo- 
lution. And he at last descended to the most supine 
of intellectual attitudes, his philosophy being mere- 
ly that somehow good would be the final goal of all, 
that everji;hing would come out all right in the end. 
And he uttered the most absurd stiitement ever 
made by any poet in the history of the world when 
he said "There Hes more faith in honest doubt, be- 
lieve me, than in half the creeds." 

All the poets were seeking after beauty. When 
Swinburne, full of Greek and Latin and talent and 
conceit, left Oxford University to begin a military 
career, he was seeking for beauty. And when 
Francis Thompson was selling matches and shoe- 
strings in the London gutters, he was seeking for 
beauty. 

Swinburne knew that the life around him was 
dull and materialistic. The scientists had said that 
the old ethical and spiritual values were dead. 
There could be no beauty in religion, for the scien- 
tists had killed religion, putting up in its place their 
owii artificial dogma. Beauty and light had gone 
out of life. 

So Swinburne decided, logically enough, that 
since beauty was not in his own land and age, he 
must seek it in the ages that had gone before. So 
[258] 



SWINBURNE ANiD THOMPSON 

he wrote not of modem scientific, dull, Victorian 
London, but of ancient Venice, of ancient Rome, 
of ancient Greece. He lamented the departure of 
Venus and Apollo and Dionysus and all the old 
gods and goddesses, and the loss of the glories of 
the spacious classic days. 

But Swinburne failed. Musical as are his rhymes 
and rhythms, lofty as was his imagination, he failed. 
He failed to write convincingly of medieval Rome 
and ancient Venice because he could not understand 
what made these cities beautiful and great — ^their 
faith. He failed to write convincingly of ancient 
Greece because he could never be that rare and in 
its way splendid thing, an honest pagan. 

No one can be a real pagan nowadays. Swin- 
burne is not to be blamed because he failed to be a 
real pagan, but because he tried to be a pagan. 
The ancient Greeks who hved before the time of 
Christ were brave and simple men, their chief vir- 
tues were courage, patriotism, obedience to the law, 
democracy and zeal for art. These virtues were in 
time taken over and multiplied by the Catholic 
Church, which has preserved all of pagan culture 
that deserved preservation. Swinburne rejected 
these virtues, probably thinking them to be Chris- 
tian innovations, and the pagans of whom he wrote 

[259] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

were sensual, decadent things, like the degenerate 
Greeks who lived in the days of Roman supremacy. 
And Swinburne finally reached his true level in the 
poem in which he speaks by the mouth of Juhan 
the Apostate, the poor maniac who rejected Chris- 
tianity and struggled vainly to restore the worship 
of the legendary gods of his heathen ancestors. 

Francis Thompson, like Swinburne, sought for 
beauty. And Francis Thompson found beauty. 
Francis Thompson found beauty because he knew 
where to look. He found beauty in prosaic scien- 
tific modem London, he found beauty in the city 
streets. He found beauty right around the comer, 
in a certain little Church around the corner which 
is also the big Church around the world. He found 
beauty where she is and always will be, in the 
Catholic faith. 

Swinburne felt his lack of faith. He bitterly re- 
sented the veil that his infidelity had put between 
himself and beauty. And therefore he attacked 
faith, and railed with all the venom of a disap- 
pointed man against Christ, his Saints and His 
Church. 

Swinburne longed for the days of pagan license 
and revelry, when Pan and Apollo dwelt with man. 
Francis Thompson knew that God was with man, 
[260] 



SWINBURNE AND THOMPSON 

that no street was so humble, no house so poor as 
not to know the tread of His feet. Instead of long- 
ing for a return of the old imaginary gods, he saw 
the beauty of God evident in such harsh thorough- 
fares as Charing Cross, and brooding even over 
the muddy waters of the Thames. He wrote: 

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 

The angels keep their ancient places, 

Turn but a stone and start a wing, 
'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces 

That miss the many splendoured thing. 

But when so sad thou canst not sadder 

Cry: — and upon thy so sore loss 
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder 

Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross. 

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, 
Cry, — clinging Heaven by the hems; 

And lo, Christ walking on the water 
Not of Gennesareth but Thames ! 



A dangerous test of a poet's genius is to be found 
in his attitude towards the simplest and smallest 
things. It is for this reason that any poet of talent 
may safely write about a mountain or a waterfall 
or a sunset, but only a very great poet should ever 

[261] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

write about children. The poets know this, and 
in spite of his paganism and sophistication Swin- 
burne often tried to prove his genius by making 
excursions into the enchanted land of childhood. 
He wrote one poem which he considered a very im- 
portant achievement, reprinting it in many edi- 
tions of his poetry. And in that poem Swinburne 
did accomplish something well worthy of accom- 
plislmient, he expressed an interesting and beautiful 
idea. Now it would be absurd to take this poem of 
Swinburne's and compare it with one of Francis 
Thompson's masterpieces, such as "The Hound of 
Heaven." But it surely is fair to compare it to a 
poem by Francis Thompson on the same theme. 

You must consider how it is that a poet writes a 
poem. There are said to be poets who are struck 
on the head by a great inspiration, and let that in- 
spiration trickle down through the shoulder and 
arm and out the end of a pen upon a piece of paper. 
There are said to be such poets, although in my 
rather extensive observation of poets I have never 
met one. The usual method is for a poet to medi- 
tate on a subject, to set down on paper all the most 
beautiful ideas which his subject suggests to him. 

Well, let us imagine Swinburne confronted by 
the miracle of childhood. Knowing that his repu- 
[262] 



SWINBURNE AND THOMPSON 

tation must stand or fall by this attempt, he en- 
deavors to record all the splendid emotions and 
noble comparisons which childhood suggests to him. 
And what is the result? What is the climax of 
thought in his poem? The climax is this: Swin- 
burne says that the baby about whom he is writing, 
who happens to be wearing a plush cap, looks like 
a moss rose bud in its soft sheath. 

This is a pleasant idea. Undoubtedly it pleased 
the baby's mother and the baby herself when she 
grew up. But these are scarcely the words that 
shall tremble on the lips of time. 

Francis Thompson was great enough to do the 
obvious thing. When he was drawing inspiration 
from the miracle of childhood, he did not think 
about plush caps and moss roses. Instead, he did 
the most natural and the most beautiful thing. He 
thought about the Infant Jesus. Childhood to him 
suggested Him Who made childhood Divine. And 
in "Ex Ore Infantium" he gave that thought im- 
imortal expression. 

But in comparing the plush cap of the baby to a 
ffnoss rose, Swinburne did not think he had said the 
last word on the subject. As the result of pro- 
longed meditation on childhood, he produced 
another poem in which he really did accomplish 

[263] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

something remarkable. He found a rhyme for 
"babe." 

Now, I doubt if any of you know the rhyme for 
"babe," unless you happen to be familiar with this 
poem of Swinburne's or with those of Chaucer, who 
also used this word. There is such a word and 
Swinburne ingeniously introduces it towards the 
end of his poem. He writes : 

Babe, if rhyme be none 

For that small sweet word, 
Babe, the sweetest one 

Ever heard, 
Right it is and sweet 

Rhjaiic should not keep true 
Time with such a sweet 

Thing as you . . . 
. . . None can tell in metre 

Fit for ears on earth 
What sweet star grew sweeter 

At your birth. 
Wisdom doubts what may be; 

Hope with smile sublime 
Trusts, but neither, baby 

Knows the rhj^me. 
Wisdom lies down lonely; 

Hope keeps watch from far; 
None but one seer only 

Sees the star. 
[264] 



SWINBURNE AND THOMPSON 

Love alone, with yearning 

Heart for astrolabe 
Takes the star's height, burning 

O'er the babe. 

Compare this, not with Francis Thompson's 
"Hound of Heaven," but with another poem on 
childhood, and from that jjoem decide which of the 
two poets had the real inspiration. Compare it with 
Francis Thompson's poem to his god-child. In this 
he imagines himself as having died, and he imagines 
that the little boy has died too. So he gives the 
little boy a kind of working plan of Heaven — he 
tells him where he may find him after he goes to 
Heaven. He writes : 

And when, immortal mortal, droops your head^ 
And you, the child of deathless song, are dead; 
Then, as you search with unaccustomed glance 
The ranks of Paradise for my countenance. 
Turn not your tread along the Uranian sod, 
Among the bearded counsellors of God ; 
For if in Eden as on earth are we 
I sure shall keep a younger company: 
Pass where beneath their ranged ganfalonS 
The starry cohorts shake their shielded suns, 
The dreadful mass of their enridged spears; 
Pass where majestical the Eternal peers 
The stately choice of the great saintdom meet, — 

[265] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

A silvern congregation, globed complete 

In sandalled shadow of the Triune feet: 

Pass by where wait, your poet wayfarer, 

Your cousin clusters, emulous to share 

With you the roseal lightnings burning mid their 

hair; 
Pass the crystaUine sea, the Lampads Seven: — 
Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven. 

I have said that Francis Thompson was great 
and simple enough to do the obvious thing. Take 
the mere matter of how to act and what to say in 
regard to a crucifix, for example. When that ad- 
mirable poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti was before a 
crucifix, or had it in mind as the theme of a poem, 
he would admire the carving, and w^rite a colorful 
romantic ballad about the man who made it, the 
man who sold it, the people through whose hands it 
had passed. The result would be a beautiful poem, 
but it would be elaborate, artificial, the result of 
ingenious effort. When Swinburne was before a 
crucifix, he was reminded of the false delights for 
which he longed, and which he thought Christian- 
ity had driven from the world. So he would rave 
and blaspheme against the ci*ucifix and all that it 
represented — producing verse that is technically 
excellent, but artificial and unnatural. But when 
[266] 



SWINBURNE AND THOMPSON 

Francis Thompson had a crucifix before him or in 
mind, he would do the simplest and most natural 
thing in the world. He would say his prayers. 
And because he was a genius he said them in words 
that are, as we use the term of literature, immortal. 



[267] 



A NOTE ON THOMAS HARDY 

OF Elizabeth-Jane who is the heroine of "The 
Mayor of Casterbridge," if heroine this tale 
may be said to have, we learn that "she did not 
cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, 
when the one to whom such unbroken tranquillity 
had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose 
youth had seemed to teach that happiness was but 
the occasional episode in a general drama of pain." 
This is a rather Jacobean sentence, in form not 
typical of Hardy, but in thought it is greatly sig- 
nificant. It is likely that Hardy himself wondered 
at the happiness in which he left Elizabeth-Jane, 
reassuring himself perhaps by the conviction that 
her "unbroken tranquillity" was the exception 
which proved the rule her youth had taught her. 
For it cannot be denied that according to the 
Hardy philosophy, implicit in his tales and explicit 
in his poems, sorrow is the rule and joy the excep- 
tion. In no other writing is he more clearly a fatalist 
than in "The Mayor of Casterbridge"; in no other 
book does he urge more unmistakably his belief that 
[268] 



A NOTE ON THOMAS HARDY 

men and women are but helpless puppets in the 
hands of mischievous fate, that good-will and cour- 
age and honesty are brittle weapons for humanity's 
defense. 

The evident fact that Thomas Hardy is a fatal- 
ist is responsible for the common and absurd idea 
that he is a pagan. Now, there is no philosophy — 
with the exception of the robust and joyous philos- 
ophy of the Middle Ages — with which Hardy's 
philosophy contrasts more strongly than it does 
with paganism, that is, with the pagan philosophy 
of the spacious classic day. When we speak of a 
pagan of ancient Greece or a pagan of ancient 
Rome we have in mind a brave patriotic man, with 
a vivid sense of the responsibilities and privileges of 
citizenship, and the habit of making the most of 
hf e, of enj oying to the full the years allowed him on 
earth. This last characteristic rose from the pagan 
fatahsm, the belief that man should make sure of 
such visible and tangible delights as were available, 
because there was no counting on the possibility of 
happiness or even of existence after death. This 
was the state of mind which succeeded the earlier 
romantic polytheism, and was the natural successor 
of a religious system which attributed to the gods 
power over mankind but neither love nor justice. 

[269] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

So the typical fatalism was materialistic; it was 
based, of course, upon despair, but its manifesta- 
tions were not desperate. Rather there was a gen- 
eral conspiracy of joy, not dissimilar to that of a 
popular religious cult which arose in the United 
States during the last half centuiy. Disease and 
sorrow and death were to be generally ignored; 
mankind was expected to eat, drink and be merry, 
and good manners required silence as to the ex- 
planatory "for to-morrow we die." 

However hollow may have been mirth of the 
pagan fatalists, it was at any rate loud and general. 
And there can be no doubt that by a kind of self- 
hypnosis these fatalists were able to give their joy 
a convincingness and a continuity — they "were al- 
ways drunken," in Baudelaire's sense. Artificial 
and in essence tragic as was tlieir state of mind, he 
would be a false historian who pictured these pagan 
fatalists as people obsessed with the idea of death 
and the unkindness of the gods; as holding with 
anything like unanimity the belief that "happiness 
was but the occasional episode in a general drama 
of pain." 

But this is Hardy's dominant idea ; it is a belief 
Oil which he insists with a propagandist enthusiasm 
which sometimes mars the artistic value of his work. 
[270] 



A NOTE ON THOMAS HARDY 

No Scotch or English members of some stricter off- 
shoot of a strict Calvinistic sect ever was more firm- 
ly convinced that this earth is a vale of tears, or 
more eager to spread this behef. Every writer, I 
think, deals with the characters who are his crea- 
tions as he imagines God to deal with mankind. 
This is why literary criticism is closer to theology 
than to any other science; this is why we cannot 
claim to understand any writer unless we know 
what he thinks about God. And the God of 
Hardy's belief, as indicated in his long succession 
of stories and poems, is no more the remote, in- 
different, sensuous, self-sufficient Deity of the 
pagan fatalist than he is the loving and omnipotent 
Father of true Christian belief. Instead he is the 
stern, avenging Deity of the Hebrews, without 
pity, accessible to no intercessors, the Deity whom 
we find to-day fearfully worshiped by adherents 
of the bleakest forms of Puritanism. It would be a 
misnomer to call Hardy's philosophy a Christian 
fatalism, but it is a fatalism which is the basis of 
the religious systems of many who since 1517 have 
professed and called themselves Christians. 

I am frequently impressed, as I read Hardy, 
with what I may call the evangelical cast of his 
mind. He is so intent on announcing his discovery 

[271] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

that mankind is fallible, unhappy, helpless, un- 
desirable. Tlie people of Hardy's stories are so 
virtueless, for the most part, that the reader can 
readily believe that Hardy is determined to show 
that they deserve no pity from the extraordinary 
Deity who is also a creature of Hardy's hnagina- 
tion, and that in his own way the novelist (like his 
greatest Puritan ^predecessor in literature) is try- 
ing to "justify the ways of God toward man." And 
"The INlayor of Casterbridge," with its lovely pic- 
tures of Wessex hills and valleys and its most un- 
lovely pictures of Wessex men and women, irre- 
sistibly recalls lines from a certain popular evangel- 
ical hymn — the lines which tell of a place "where 
every prospect pleases and only man is vile." 

Hardy is a true realist in that he reports faith- 
fully the habits and manners of people with whom 
he is familiar, and in that — unlike JNIr. Dreiser and 
other claimants to the title realist — he has humor 
and admits it to his chronicles. Also he admits 
good impulses to the lives he creates, although his 
philosophy seldom lets him cause these impulses to 
be translated into successful action. He is poet 
enough to have a sense of beauty and humor inher- 
ent in phrases. "But I know that Vs a banded 
teetotaler," says Solomon Longways, "and that if 
[272] 



A NOTE ON THOMAS HARDY 

any of his men be ever so little overtook by a drop 
he's down upon 'em as stern as the Lord upon the 
jovial Jews." And what living poet could write 
a simpler and more moving study of the immemo- 
rial subject, death, than Mother Cuxsom's brief 
elegy on Mrs. Henchard? "Well, poor soul, she's 
helj^less to hinder that or anything now. And all 
her shining keys will be took from her, and her 
cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish 
seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways 
will all be as nothing." 

A student of literary motives can easily trace 
the working of Hardy's philosophy in this book — ■ 
can see it guiding the novelist's pen, changing his 
purposes, forcing him to deal harshly, sometimes, 
with characters whom a writer must come to love 
as a father his children. Was not Matthew Hench- 
ard's rehabilitation to be complete, and the tale to 
end with a prosperous reunited family? Probably, 
but Thomas Hardy (unlike Victor Hugo when he 
handled a similar plot in "Les Miserables") had his 
monster theory to reckon with. So Elizabeth-Jane 
must be Newson's child, Lucette must maleficently 
tangle lives, and Henchard must die in a road-side 
hut. And even the goldfinch must starve in its 
paper-covered cage. 

[273] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

And how Hardy enjoys the moments when he 
escapes his obsession! He had as much fun when 
Henchard and Farfrae wrestled on the top floor 
of the granary as Blaclvmore did in the Homeric 
fisticuffs of "Lorna Doone." When Hardy dressed 
up Lucetta and sent her out to plead with Hench- 
ard he had the same sporting excitement that 
Thackeray had when he prepared Becky Sharp for 
her conquests. At such times Hardy seems mo- 
mentarily to accept the existence of free will, with 
its tremendous dramatic possibilities. These are 
his moments of greatest creative power, of highest 
poetry, of clearest discernment. They occur more 
frequently and they last longer in his latest writ- 
ings. The War has seen to that. 

Copyright, 1917, by Boni & Liveright. Reprinted from their McmI- 
ern Library Edition by special arrangement. 



[274] 



MADISON JULIUS CAWEINi 

(1865-1914) 

AMERICA has had two great poets of nature 
— two men called to the task of reflecting in 
a mirror of words the beauty of meadow and forest. 
One of these was William Cullen Bryant. The 
other was Madison Julius Cawein. 

As Bryant drew his inspiration from the wooded 
hills and fertile valleys of his native New England, 
so Madison Cawein drew his from the meadows of 
the South, especially those of Kentucky. The term 
"nature poet" has been used in derision of some 
writers who lavish sentimental adulation upon 
every bird and flower, who pretend an admiration 
for things of which they have no real understand- 
ing. But Madison Cawein knew what he was writ- 
ing about ; he had an amazing, we might say a peril- 
ous, intimacy with nature. And he had no vague 
love for all nature — he knew too much for that. 
True, he knew nature in her delicate and in her 
splendid aspect — he saw the barberry redden in the 

[275] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

lanes, he feasted his eyes on "the orange and amber 
of the marigold, the terra-cottas of the zinnia flow- 
ers," he learned lovely secrets from whippoorwill, 
swallow, and cricket, and he could see drowsy Sum- 
mer rocking the world to sleep in her kindly arms. 
But also he knew (with a knowledge which only 
Algernon Blackwood among contemporary writers 
has equaled ) that nature has her cruel and terrible 
aspects. He knew that the daily life of bird and 
beast — yes, and the daily life of flower and tree — 
is as much a tragedy as a comedy. So (in the son- 
net-sequence he wrote by the Massachusetts shore 
in 1911) he saw a certain grove as "a sad room, de- 
voted to the dead"; he felt the relentlessness of the 
ocean mists invading the shore; he saw an autumn 
branch staining a pool like a blur of blood; he 
made us share his genuine terror of deserted mill- 
streams where "the cardinal-flower, in the sun's 
broad beam, with sudden scarlet takes you by sur- 
prise," and of dark and menacing swamps, ominous 
with trembling moss, purple-veined pitcher-plants 
and wild grass trailing over the bank like the hair 
of a drowned girl. His studies of nature were ac- 
curate enough to satisfy any botanist — Miss Jessie 
B. Rittenhouse has said that one might explore the 
Kentucky woods and fields with a volume of 
[276] 



MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN 

Cawein's poems as a handbook and identify many 
a lowly and exquisite bower first recognized in 
song. But his poems were not mere catalogues of 
natural beauties, any more than they were senti- 
mental ideaHzations of them. They were, to re- 
peat a phrase, reflections of nature, reflections 
painted rather than photographed, but interpreted 
rather than romanticized. 

Madison Cawein had not long to wait for the 
recognition which he enjoyed throughout his life. 
Bom on March 23rd, 1865, in Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, and educated in the high school of his native 
city, he pubhshed his first book, "Blooms of the 
Berry," in 1887. "The Triumph of Music" fol- 
lowed in 1888, and soon after its publication Mr. 
William Dean Howells wrote of the young South- 
em poet words that brought him to the attention of 
a large audience, words that applied as truly to his 
posthumous book, "The Cup of Comus," as to the 
rhymes of his boyhood. In the North American 
Review, Mr. Howells wrote : 

"He has the gift, in a measure that I do not think 
surpassed in any poet, of touching some smallest or 
commonest thing in nature and making it live from 
the manifold associations in which we have our 

[277] 



FUGITIVE riECES 

being, and glow thereafter with an inextinguishable 
beauty." 

From 1887 to the time of his death, scarcely a 
year passed that did not see the publication of a 
new book of poems by Madison Cawein. Of course, 
this caused him to be accused of writing too much, 
of giving the world poems written hastily and care- 
lessly. There was some justice in this accusation; 
undoubtedly he would have written better poems if 
he had written fewer. ^Ir. II. Houston Peckham, 
of Purdue University, in an article which appeared 
in the South Atlunfic Qunrtcrli/ soon after 
Cawein's death, told a story which is significant. 
The poet was about to destroy one of his lyrics. 
A friend rescued it and sent it to a magazine. 
When it appeared in print, it was shown to Cawein, 
who failed to recognize it as his own work. He had 
utterly forgotten it in the course of a few months. 
Now, for a poet to forget the children of his own 
fancy is a sign that he is writing too much. And 
yet ISIadison Cawein was not so prolitic as a list of 
his more than a score of volumes would indicate. 
For many of his books contained poems that had 
already appeared between covers — this is true of 

the ]\Iacmillan volume called "Poems" and of 
many others. He seemed to desire to produce a 

[278] 



MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN 

book annually — but fortunately for his art he did 
not believe it necessary that every volume should 
contain only new poems. 

In one of the most famous of his essays, Ruskin 
wrote : 

"It is, I hope, now made clear to the reader in 
all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful 
only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is 
fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of 
Truth is entire, over this as over every other natural 
and just state of the human mind." 

Madison Cawein was a loyal subject of Truth, 
the accuracy of his descriptions of nature has 
seldom been called into question. As to the 
pathetic fallacy and his relation to it — that might 
be the subject of an interesting study. At any rate 
it may be said that he seldom indulged in that com- 
mon and thoroughly normal fallacy by which the 
poet sees nature weep because of his own sorrow 
or smile because of his own joy. Instead, he was 
filled with the gloom native to the swamp which he 
beheld, or with mirth that he caught from the lyric 
ecstasy of the dawn. 

He was a sympathetic student of humanity, as 
every true poet must be, and he resented the state- 
ment that mankind had no place in his poetic vision. 

[270] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

But he was at his best when he wrote not of reason- 
able humanity but of the world of animal and veg- 
etable things that have no reason but have, to the 
poet, qualities stranger and more interesting than 
reason. He wrote well of a ploughman, but better 
of the field in which the ploughman worked. He 
wrote well of a house full of men and women and 
children, but better of an empty house with its 
myrtle run wild, its paths hidden by flowering grass, 
and swallows flying through its broken windows. 
He subordinated himself to wild nature, letting her 
speak to the world through him, instead of merely 
going to her for metaphors appropriate to his own 
emotional experiences. And this, while it resulted 
in beautiful poetry, was a dangerous thing to do. 
"Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth," 
said another poet, "never did any milk of hers once 
bless my thirsting mouth." Madison Cawein got, 
it seems, little gratitude from Nature, although to 
do her honor he had curiously distorted the true 
vision of man's place in the universe. When his 
frail body was put in the frozen earth a few years 
ago, it seemed to many of his friends and critics 
that he had died at the beginning of a new phase of 
his genius, that his latest poems, vague and tenta- 
tive as some of them were, showed that he was look- 
[280] 



MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN 

ing at the world with a new sense of proportion, 
and that hereafter his whole scheme of things would 
be differently arranged — man being the center of 
the visible universe, and not," as in Blackwood's 
novels, a wondering visitor to a world of plants and 
beasts. 

But death intervened, and what he might have 
written can only be guessed from such poems as 
"The Song of Songs" and "Laus Deo" and "The 
Iron Age" in "The Cup of Comus." What he ac- 
complished was worth doing, and he did it well. 
He put the meadows and forests of the South into 
poems as hauntingly beautiful as themselves. 



[281] 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 

(1859-1907) 

POETIC sensations are rare in our time. For 
a quarter of a century we have enjoyed a 
regular succession of excellent books of verse — 
verse graceful, fanciful, musical, interesting, and 
sometimes noble. Perhaps the general average of 
verse is higher to-day than it has previously been 
in the history of English letters. But there have 
been few books of verse which have caused the heart 
of the public to beat faster, few books of verse which 
critics have carried in their pockets for weeks at a 
time to show to their friends. 

There has been one such book, however. In 1893 
was published "Poems," by Francis Thompson. 
And this volume (as even Thompson's enemies can- 
not deny) excited, favorably or unfavorably, all its 
reviewers. Some hailed it as a work of surpassing 
genius, some found it irritatingly bad. But all felt 
about it passionately; no one damned it with faint 
praise and no one praised it with faint damns. 
[282] 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 

Francis Thompson was a Roman Catholic and 
his faith gave him the themes, the imagery, often 
the phraseology, and the inspiration of all his best 
poetry. Yet his first most admiring critics were 
men by no means in sympathy with his religion. 
H. D. Traill, a North of Ireland Protestant, wel- 
comed him as ^*a new poet of the first rank." Rich- 
ard Le Gallienne called him "Crashaw bom again, 
but bom greater." John Davidson said "Thomp- 
son's poetry at its highest attains a sublimity un- 
surpassed by any other Victorian poet." And 
Arnold Bennett wrote of Thompson's second book 
"Sister Songs," "My belief is that Francis Thomp- 
son has a richer natural genius, a finer poetical 
equipment, than any poet save Shakespeare." 

Of course there were hostile critics. Some of 
them were annoyed by the poet's phraseology, 
especially his use of words of Latin derivation and 
of forms which he coined for his own use. But 
most of them were annoyed by his themes; they 
resented the intrusion of a flaming Catholicity 
among the delicate artificial philosophies of the 
poets of the nineties, and their resentment foimd 
voice in attacks that recalled the brave old days 
of "This will never do" and "Back to your galli- 
pots!" That this resentment continued, in some 

1283] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

minds, even after the poet had died and his work 
had been received as an inalienable part of the 
world's treasury of English song is shown by the 
savagery of Austin Harrison's "review" of Ever- 
ard IMeynell's "Life of Francis Thompson" in the 
English Review in 1913. 

Francis Thompson was born on the 16th of De- 
cember, 1859, at Preston, Lancashire, England. 
In his boyhood he was taught at the school of the 
Niuns of the Cross and Passion, and in 1870. he 
entered Ushaw College. After seven years at 
Ushaw — years marked by one great tragedy, the 
decision by those in authority that his "nervous 
timidity" unfitted him for the priesthood — he went 
to Owens College as a student of medicine. His 
years in Manchester taught him little medicine, but 
they taught him other things destined to affect his 
life. Francis Thompson read books, but they were 
not surgical treatises. They were books of poetry, 
of essay, of theology, of scholastic philosophy. His 
love for music increased, and he attended more con- 
certs than lectures. Also in Manchester he ac- 
quired his besetting sin — the opium habit. He 
took the drug first in the form of laudanum, during 
a painful illness. He continued to take it through- 
out many years of his life. It staved off the as- 
[284] 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 

saults of tuberculosis, it prevented his success in 
medicine or any other methodical and exact career^ 
and thus removed what might have been rivals to 
the art of poetry. But, as his biographer says, 
opium "dealt with him remorselessly as it dealt with 
Coleridge and all its consumers. It put him in such 
constant strife with his own conscience that he had 
ever to hide himself from himself, and for conceal- 
ment he fled to that which made him ashamed, until 
it was as if a fig-leaf were of necessity plucked from 
the Tree of the Fall. It killed in him the capacity 
for acknowledging those duties to his family and 
friends, which, had his heart not been in shackles, 
he would have owned with no ordinary ardor." 

Francis Thompson's years immediately after his 
failure in his medical examinations were spent in 
London, in poverty and ill health. But no man 
of genius can long remain hidden. In a strange 
and romantic manner, some of his magnificent 
poetry and prose came to the attention of Wilfred 
and Alice Meynell. They gave to the world the 
blessing of acquaintance with Francis Thompson's 
work, and to the poet Miey gave, in addition to more 
material benefits, the wise and affectionate friend- 
ship his lonely spirit most needed. He resisted the 
opium habit, increased in physical and mental 

[285] 



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health, gained congenial employment as a reviewer 
for the best of the London weeklies. The pubhca- 
tion of his books established him, in the opinion of 
those whose opinion was most worth-while, as a 
figure of great literary importance. He died "a 
very good death" at the age of forty-eight. Had 
his mind been (as fortunately it was not) concerned 
with literature in his last hours he would have 
known that he had attained a fame of the kind that 
does not tarnish with the years, that he had reaHzed 
the poet's ambition of adding substantially to the 
world's heritage of beauty. 

If Francis Thompson is to be related by critics 
and historians of literature to writers of a more 
recent date than that of Crashaw and Southwell, 
it must be to the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite 
Brotherhood. What they promised, Thompson 
fulfilled. In a materialistic and sophisticated age, 
Rossetti and his friends sought to reproduce the 
romantic splendors of the Middle Ages. They took 
delight in the lovely externalities of the Catholic 
Church. Rossetti's friend, Coventry Patmore, 
went further than the Pre-Raphaelites ; he became 
a Catholic and thus carried the theories of the Pre- 
Raphaelite Brotherhood to their logical and tre- 
mendous conclusion. Patmore's gi'eater disciple, 
[286] 



FRANCIS THOMPSON 

Francis Thompson, brought back to English 
poetry the knowledge, largely forgotten since the 
Reformation, that the proper study of mankind 
is God; he refused to limit his mind, as his con- 
temporaries did theirs, by temporal and astro- 
nomical boundaries. A universal poet must sing 
the universe. And the center of the universe is 
God. So Francis Thompson sang of God, and in 
"The Hound of Heaven" he made of man's relation 
to God and God's relation to man a poem that 
is unsurpassed in the literature of spiritual expe- 
rience. And all great poetry deals with spiritual 
experience. 



[287] 



JOHlSr MASEFIELD 

(1874—) 

TO be versatile and prolific generally is to be 
unimportant. Especially in literature, Jack- 
of -all-trades is, as a rule, master of none. An ex- 
ception brilliantly proving this rule is John Mase- 
field. 

Homer (scholars tell us) was not one man but 
a company of poets, writing through more than one 
century. Shakespeare (we are encouraged to be- 
lieve) was not a theatrical manager who liked oc- 
casionally to build a play to show his dramatists 
how it should be done, but a syndicate of philoso- 
phers, poets, playwrights, scientists, and politi- 
cians. Three hundred years from now literary de- 
tectives will busy themselves with discovering the 
names of the sailor, the farmer, the Hellenist, the 
Orientalist, the sociologist, the realist, the roman- 
ticist, the dramatist, the ballad maker, the sonnet- 
eer, the novelist, the short story writer, who called 
their conspiracy John Masefield. They will attrib- 
[288] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

ute some of the "Salt Water Ballads" to Kipling, 
some to Henry Newbolt, some to C. Fox Smith. 
They will attribute "The Sweeps of Ninety-Eight" 
to Dr. Douglas Hyde. They will attribute "The 
Faithful" to Sturge Moore. They will attribute 
"The Tragedy of Nan" to D. H. Lawrence, part 
of "A Mainsail Haul" to Charles Whibley, part 
of it to Algernon Blackwood, and part of it to 
Robert Louis Stevenson. And some of his ballads 
they will attribute to Wilfrid Gibson and some of 
his lyrics to WilHam Butler Yeats. This will be a 
stupid thing for them to do, but nevertheless, they 
will do it. 

One reason why the conduct of these hypotheti- 
cal scholars is particularly irritating is that John 
Masefield is a writer of strong individuahty. He 
has a distinct and easily recognizable style; his 
theme may be a battle of wits between Tiger Roche 
and the rebel hunters of 1798, or the tragedy of 
Nan Hardwick and the mutton parsties and the 
malicious Pargetters, or the great intrigues of royal 
Spain, or the ambitions of Pompey, or the soul of 
man in its relation to the mercy of God — whatever 
his theme may be, his style is the same. The 
writer's eyes may be fixed upon the mysteries of 
his own heart, or they may be searching the bound- 

[289] 



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less heavens; he is, nevertheless, always a realisiB. 
They may be curiously studying the most ordinary 
details of modern life ; he is, nevertheless, always an 
idealist. So the intellectual, perhaps it might be 
said the spiritual, attitude of John JNlasefield is un- 
varying. And in this is to be found the reason for 
the intense individuality of the writer as seen in 
his works, for the feeling, common to all his read- 
ers, of being in direct communication with him. 
And the style of the sequence of sonnets in the 
Shakespearean manner is much the same as that 
of the stories about pirates and the drama of 
ancient Japan. The nervous expressive diction, 
the direct Elizabethan colloquialism, these things 
are Masefield; the form may vary, but not in its 
characteristics, the language. 

A writer's attitude toward life and toward the 
things beyond life is his own; it is not to be ac- 
counted for by heredity or environment. But a 
writer's style must necessarily be influenced by 
what he reads and by the talk of those with whom 
he spends the formative periods of his life. Even 
the careless reader of John JMasefield's books will 
notice occasionally in them, especially in the lyrics, 
a strong Celtic flavor. Masefield's "Sea-Fever" 
and "Roadways" and "Cardigan Bay" and "Trade 
[290] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

Winds" and "The Harper's Song" surely belong 
to the same family as Eva Gore Booth's "The 
Little Waves of Breffny" and William Butler 
Yeats's "The Lake Isle of Innisfree." Further- 
more, Masefield has that belief in the beauty of 
tragedy, tragedy in itself without regard to its 
moral significance, which is characteristic of many 
of the Irish writers of our generation. In the pref- 
ace to "The Tragedy of Nan" he writes: 

"Tragedy at its best is a vision of the heart of 
life. The heart of life can only be laid bare in 
the agony and exultation of dreadful acts. The 
vision of agony, or spiritual contest, pushed be- 
yond the limits of the dying personahty, is exalt- 
ing and cleansing. It is only by such visions that 
a multitude can be brought to the passionate 
knowledge of things exulting and eternal. . . . Our 
playwrights have all the powers except that power 
of exaltation which comes from a delighted brood- 
ing on excessive, terrible things. That power is 
seldom granted to men; twice or thrice to a race 
perhaps, not oftener. But it seems to me certain 
that every effort, however humble, towards the 
achieving of that power helps the genius of a race 
to obtain it, though the obtaining may be fifty years 
after the strivers are dead." 

[291] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Now in our time only one other writer has ex- 
pressed this idea with equal force. And that writer 
is ]Mr. William Butler Yeats. He has written in an 
essay: ''Tragic art, passionate art, . . . the con- 
founder of understanding, moves us by setting us 
to reverie, by alluring us almost to the intensity of 
trance." So we find the Irish and the English 
writer guided by one impulse and by one convic- 
tion. And the result is that considering this, and 
considering also the Celtic idiom which seemingly 
comes so naturally from the lips of INIr. INIasefield, 
Englishman though he be, in his lyrics, in his poetic 
dramas, and in many of the stories in "A INIainsail 
Haul," we are tempted to believe that the Irish 
literary movement has stretched a shadowy arm 
across the channel and laid its potent spell upon a 
man of Saxon blood. And to this theory INIase- 
field's close friendship with William Butler Yeats 
lends color. 

But there are flaws in this theory. One of th^m 
is that ^lasefield was writing in this manner before 
he met Yeats, before, indeed, the Irish literary 
movement had attracted nmch attention outside of 
its own home. Another flaw is, that this idea of the 
nobility, one might almost say, of the loveliness of 
tragedy, while it is in our time more Irish than 
[292] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

English, was held by the English dramatists and 
poets of centuries ago — Marlowe, for instance, and 
Webster and Shakespeare himself. The very ear- 
liest English poets selected tragic themes as a 
matter of course. Which of the great old ballads is 
without at least one bloody murder? Furthermore, 
the modern Irish-English idiom is to a great extent 
the idiom of England some centuries ago. There 
are rhymes in Shakespeare and even in Pope which 
show that what we consider Irish mispronuncia- 
tions of English are simply English pronunciations 
that have been carried through the ages unchanged 
— the "ay" sound for "ea" is an example of that. 
"Our gracious Anne, whom the three realms obey, 
does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea." 
Chaucerian scholars say that the Wife of Bath 
talked what we would call Irish dialect. Now, 
John Masefield's literary idols belong not to his 
own generation or that immediately preceding it 
but to the early days of English letters. His favor- 
ite poem, he has told me, is Chaucer's "Ballad of 
Good Counsel." This reading has affected his 
style and it has affected also his thought, to the 
strengthening of the first and the deepening of the 
second. 

There has been much said and written about 

[293] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

jSIasefield's romantic youth — about his experiences 
before the mast and behind the bar. There was a 
tendency during his tour of the United States in 
the early spring of 1916 to regard him as very much 
of a self-made man, to marvel at the miracle of 
genius which turned a bartender-sailor into a great 
poet. But the fact of the matter is that Masefield 
is essentially of the literary type, a man who might 
readily have supported himself by school-teaching, 
journalism, or some other unromantic trade, but 
deliberately selected colorful and exciting occupa- 
tions. No one can talk to him and retain the idea 
that Masefield is a "sailor-poet" or a "bartender- 
poet." He is an educated English gentleman, very 
thoroughly a man of letters, who has had the good 
fortune to add to his treasury of experience by 
travels in strange places and among strange peo- 
ple. 

Masefield's first important romantic experience, 
however, was undergone at a time when the poet 
was so young that it can scarcely have been the 
result of his o^vn volition. Born in 1874 at Led- 
bury, in the west of England, he was indentured to 
a captain in the English merchant marine at the 
age of fourteen years. A fourteen-year-old boy on 
shipboard generally learns to hate passionately and 
[294] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

consistently the sea and all that is associated with 
it. And it would not be strictly true to say that 
Masefield gained from this early adventure a love 
of the sea. Rather he then came under the spell 
of the sea, a spell from which he has never escaped. 
He has not that sentimental affection for the sea 
which inspires the life-on-the-ocean-waves' verse 
written by landsmen who know Neptune only by 
week-end visits in the summer time. He has been 
in the power of the sea more than it is altogether 
safe for so sensitive a spirit to be. He seems 
haunted by the sea; in those of his writings which 
in theme are least related to the sea the reader finds 
that again and again the figures and comparisons 
are drawn from the poet's memory of days when 
above and beyond him were nothing but water and 
sky. Not even Algernon Charles Swinburne was 
so much influenced by the sea as Masefield has 
been. 

It is true that Masefield has given more beauti- 
ful expression to love for the sea than any other 
poet of our time — "Sea-Fever" alone would estab- 
lish him as the sea's true lover. But also Mase^eld 
has expressed with terrible force the cruelty of the 
sea, its brutal and terrifying energy, its soul-shat- 
tering melancholy. And nowhere in English liter- 

[295] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

atiire is it possible to find more vivid pictures of the 
bitter hardship of a seaman's hfe than in the "Salt 
Water Poems and Balhids." JNIasefiekl is not elec- 
tive nor selective in his attitude toward the sea; his 
feelinfv toward the sea seems almost an obsession. 
The sea is not subject to his genius; it speaks 
through him. 

JNIasefield's life on shipboard did more than put 
him in the power of the sea, it began his interest in 
the lives and thoughts of simple hard-working peo- 
ple. And this interest has never left him. It is 
true that he occasionally gives us something like 
"The Faithful" or "Philip, the King" or "The 
Tragedy of Pompey the Great." But his heart is 
in poems like "Dauber" and "The Everlasting 
INIercy" and in stories like "A Deal of Cards," in 
which he writes of unsophisticated people who feel 
strongly and do not conceal their emotions. 

It was, perhaps, because of a real sense of the 
value and interest of life among simple people that 
JNIasefield made the selection he did of work to sup- 
port himself during his first visit to the United 
States. In Connecticut he was a farm laborer, in 
Yonkers he was a hand in a carpet-factory and in 
New York City he was a sort of helper to the bar- 
tender in the old Colonial hotel on Sixth Avenue 
[296] 



JOHN MASKFIKLD 

near Jefferson Market Court. This hotel is still in 
the possession of the family who employed Mase- 
field and their reeollections of him are highly enter- 
taining. The writer once asked the eldest son of the 
family if Masefield had written anything during the 
days of his emi)loymcnt there. He had not, it 
seemed, and he was associated in the minds of the 
family with the art of poetry, for one reason only — 
that being that he used to sing to the fretful baby, 
holding it in his lap as he sat in a rocking-chair in 
the kitchen, waiting for his employer's wife to serve 
his dinner. 

When Masefield went back to England he went 
to work as a clerk in a London oflice. He was 
writing now, putting on paper the pictures that 
had been etched in his brain and in his heart during 
his wander years. Now he perceived the deep and 
abiding beauty and the deep and abiding tragedy 
(to Masefield they were the same) of his expe- 
riences. How this knowledge came to him he has 
told in twelve immensely sincere lines. E. A. 
Robinson has said that poetry is a language which 
tells, by means of a more or less emotional reaction, 
that which cannot be stated in prose. And there- 
fore it is better to let Masefield tell this in poetry 

[297] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

than to attempt to paraphrase it. He wrote, by 
way of preface to "A Mainsail Haul": 

"I yarned with ancient shipmen beside the galley 

range, 
And some were fond of women, but all were fond 

of change; 
They sang their quavering chanties, all in a fo'c's'le 

drone, 
And I was finally suited, if I had only known. 

I rested in an ale-house that had a sanded floor, 
Where seamen sat a-drinking and chalking up the 

score ; 
They yarned of ships and mermaids, of topsail 

sheets and slings, 
But I was discontented ; I looked for better things. 

I heard a drunken fiddler in Billy Lee's saloon, 

I brooked an empty belly with thinking of the tune ; 

I swung the doors disgusted as drunkards rose to 
dance, 

And now I know the music was life and life's ro- 
mance." 

Masefield's work soon attracted the attention of 
William Butler Yeats, John Galsworthy, Sturge 
Moore, and other English men of letters, and 
largely through their efforts was brought to the at- 
£298] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

tention of the public. American readers first be- 
came aware of him through the pubhcation of two 
long poems — "The Everlasting Mercy" and "The 
Widow in the Bye Street." To say that these were 
long narrative, poems, dealing with intensely tragic 
and dramatic events in the life of the British poor, 
is not to describe them adequately. They were a 
poetry new to our generation. They showed an 
intimate knowledge of the lives of the poor, 
especially of the criminal poor, not to be found in 
the amiable poems of Mr. W. W. Gibson and sim- 
ilar sociahstic dilettantes. They were not socialis- 
tic in message; rather they were individualistic. 
Saul Kane was not a drunkard because of economic 
pressure; Jimmy's siren lived an evil life merely 
because she was evil, not as a result of the injustice 
of man-made laws or anything else of the sort. So 
precedents were violated and Masefield scored a 
success of sensation. The savage colloquialisms of 
the poems, their violent emotionalism, their melo- 
drama — these things brought them to the attention 
of a large number of people not ordinarily inter- 
ested in the work of new poets, and thus an 
audience was prepared for the poet's later and more 
important work. 

There can be no doubt that the work pubhshed 

[299] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

later was more important. There were crudities 
in these two narrative poems which seemed to be 
put there dehberately, in order to startle and shock 
the reader. JNIasefield followed these poems with 
other poems in the same manner done with much 
greater teclmical skill and with a more convincing 
sincerity. "Dauber" and "Biography" and the 
"Daffodil Fields" are more likely to be read by 
the next generation than are "The Widow in the 
Bye Street" and "The Everlasting Mercy," in spite 
of the fact that the last mentioned poem was 
awarded the Edward de Polignac prize of $500 by 
the Royal Society of Literature. 

It is hard to tell just what form JNIasefield will 
finally select for the expression of his genius. He 
has written ballads, lyrics, plays, novels, short- 
stories, even histories, and all these forms he has 
molded to his own use. At the time of writing he 
is in France actively engaged in Red Cross work, 
and has begun to send to the magazines stories of 
the things that he has seen which entitle him to be 
called a great reporter. The quest for beauty has 
been and is his ruling passion — he is splendidly ex- 
plicit on this subject in the magnificent sequence of 
Shakespearean sonnets printed in "Good Friday 
and Other Poems." He has searched for this 
[300] 



JOHN MASEFIELD 

beauty on the boundless sea, in noisy barrooms, in 
English meadows, in the streets of New York. He 
is seeking it now, we may believe, in the tragedy 
and heroism of the battlefield. And always, his 
sonnets tell us, it is evasive and very distant, be- 
cause its real dwelling place is his own soul. 



[301] 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

(1869-1910) 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY was 
throughout his life regarded as the most 
promising of the younger American poets. And 
when he died in 1810 most critics mourned for the 
unwritten lyrics and poetic dramas of which Amer- 
ican literature had thus been robbed; they men- 
tioned the author as a gifted youth, whom fate had 
removed at the beginning of a splendid career. 

To a certain extent this attitude was a tribute 
f o the youthful spirit of William Vaughn Moody, 
to his vivacity, energy and cheerfulness. But it 
was chiefly a new illustration of the fact that now- 
adays poets flower late in the season. Moody was 
forty-one years old when he died — and there was 
a time when the poet of forty was considered well 
past the meridian of his genius. Most of the great 
poets estabhshed their fame before they were thirty 
years old — Keats and Shelley died at twenty-five 
and twenty-nine respectively. But nowadays the 
[802] 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

poet of forty-five is still called young and the poet 
of thirty our kind critics consider a precocious in- 
fant. 

As a matter of stem fact, it is doubtful that 
American literature has really lost much by 
Moody's death. He wrote "Gloucester Moors" 
and the "Ode in Time of Hesitation" and "The 
Faith Healer." The conscientious student of his 
work cannot escape the conviction that in these he 
gave the world all that he really had to give. Of 
course he would have written more — nature lyrics, 
poems on political and sociological questions, poeti- 
cal dramas dealing with philosophical themes, prose 
plays of modern American life. But toward the 
end of his brief life his work was not gaining in 
force. Readers of "The Death of Eve" have little 
sorrow over the poet's failure to complete this play 
— the first two members of the trilogy which it was 
to conclude are nobly phrased, but they are so 
cloudy in thought and weak in dramatic construc- 
tion that they do their author's fame little service. 
Prometheus, Pandora, Deucalion, Eve, Cain, 
Raphael, and Michael, angels and archangels, 
thrones, dominions and powers, were characters 
too mighty for the talent of this poet, who could 
handle adequately enough a problem of contempo- 

[303] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

rary politics or draw quaint lessons from the caged 
beasts in a menagerie. 

Perhaps the coldness which annoys some readers 
of Moody's poems, the sense of aloofness from the 
common experience of manldnd, the artificiality 
which mars such expressions of sympathy for 
humanity as are intended in "Gloucester Moors," 
are things for which it is unjust to blame the poet. 
His friend, John M. Manly, wrote in the preface 
to his "Poems and Plays": "He was an epicure of 
life, a voluptuary of the whole range of physical, 
mental, and spiritual perfections." But in Moody's 
poetry we find more of the mind than of the heart ; 
we feel that we are in the presence of a charming 
and cultured personality, but we have no feeling of 
intimacy with the writer. 

"Of thine own tears thy song must tears beget," 
wrote Rossetti. "O singer, magic mirror hast thou 
none save thine own manifest heart." And a greater 
poet than Rossetti exclaimed, "Ah, must (Designer 
Infinite ! ) Thou char the wood ere thou canst limn 
with?" A similar thought was in Horace's mind 
when in the Ars Poetica he said, "if you wish me to 
week you must first weep yourself." 

Well, few tears are drawn by Moody's poems, nor 
did many tears go into their making. His wood 
[304] 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

was not charred. But he was a conscientious and 
accomplished artist, doing the best he could with 
the powers that were his. His work is thoughtful, 
imaginative, and well-wrought, his "Great Divide" 
is destined to periodic revivals, and the best of his 
lyrics are sure of a place in the anthologies. 

William Vaughn Moody was born in Spencer, 
Indiana, on July 8th, 1869. He was the son of a 
prosperous retired steamboat captain. In 1871 the 
family moved to New Albany, on the Ohio River. 
The elder Moody died in 1886. William Vaughn 
Moody went to Riverside Academy and entered 
Harvard in 1889, being then twenty years old. In 
his senior year he went abroad with a wealthy fam- 
ily as tutor to their son. During the trip he made 
a walking tour of the Black Forest and Switzerland 
with a party of friends, including Norman Hap- 
good. He also spent some time in Greece and Italy. 

He returned to Harvard to study for his master's 
degree and stayed on as an instructor in English. 
In the autumn of 1895 he went to the University of 
Chicago as instructor in English, reaching the rank 
of assistant professor before his departure eight 
years later. His life at the University of Chicago 
seems to have been rather leisurely. It was varied 
by journeys abroad and bicycle tours in Illinois and 

[305] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

Wisconsin. Swimming, bicycling, golf, tennis, 
walking, and mountain-climbing are mentioned by 
Mr. Manly as Moody's favorite sports, and it is not 
to be wondered that he had little time for writing, 
however unexacting his academic duties may have 
been. 

Although his connection with the University of 
Chicago did not cease until later, he taught no 
classes after 1902. He did, however, do a certain 
amount of work academic in character, editing some 
editions of the classics and collaborating with his 
friend Robert M. Lovett in a "History of English 
Literature." He first became known to the general 
public by the successful presentation of his prose 
play, "The Great Divide." He died in Colorado 
Springs on the seventeenth of October, 1910. A 
few months before his death he married Miss Har- 
riet C. Brainerd. 

It is interesting to trace the influences in Moody's 
work. He was very thoroughly a man of books, 
and some critics complain that there is more ink than 
blood in the veins of the people of whom he writes. 
Certainly it is possible to find traces of his reading 
on nearly every page that he wrote. The lovely 
fourth stanza of "Gloucester Moors" is Coleridge; 
"Faded Pictures" is Browning at his worst; and 
[306] 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

"The Daguerreotype" is a deliberate effort to imi- 
tate the irregular ode-form of Coventry Patmore. 
And of course "Heart's Wildflower" and "A Dia- 
logue in Purgatory," like the lyrics in "The Masque 
of Judgment," are a Chicago version of Rossetti. 

In his prose plays we find Moody writing with an 
energy which he seldom exhibited in his poetry. Not 
in Jerome K. Jerome's "The Passing of the Third 
Floor Back," nor in Charles Rann Kennedy's "The 
Servant in the House," is the idea of the benefi- 
cent effect of a powerful and virtuous nature more 
plausibly presented than in "The Faith Healer." 
And Moody obtained his effect more honestly than 
did Jerome and Kennedy; his faith-healer is merely 
a faith-healer to the end of the play, there is no 
suggestion that he is more than human. In many 
respects "The Faith Healer" is Moody's most im- 
portant work. There is more poetry in its prose 
than in all his poetic dramas put together. When 
Michaelis makes love to Rhoda and tells the story 
of his childhood home, when Beeler describes the 
picture of Pan and the Pilgrim, and when Uncle 
Abe chants his prophecies and visions, then there 
is real poetry — poetry not unlike some of the best 
passages in Synge's plays. The "strange mounting 
sing-song" of Uncle Abe's speech evidently was the 

[307] 



FUGITIVE PIECES 

inspiration of the best parts of Mr. Ridgley Tor- 
rence's "The Rider of Dreams." 

"The Great Divide" has been magnificently 
acted, but it is inferior in every respect to "The 
Faith Healer." Its theme — the contrast between 
the Puritan spirit which Moody considered typical 
of the Eastern States, and the generous paganism 
which he thought characteristically Western, — 
might be, and probably will be, the basis of an im- 
portant play. But there never was a New Eng- 
lander remotely resembling Ruth Jordan, there 
never was a Westerner remotely resembling 
Stephen Ghent. Hero and heroine, or villain and 
villainess, or whatever they are supposed to be, have 
actuality, it is true — ^the actuality of figures seen in 
a nightmare. And the other characters in the play 
have no actuality whatsoever. And the author's 
total lack of humor never injured his work more 
than in this play. It is painful to see situations es- 
sentially humorous made banal and dull by the 
author's obtuseness. If only the idea had occurred 
to Bernard Shaw instead of to William Vaughn 
Moody! 

Perhaps one reason why "The Great Divide," 
convincing enough when well acted, is a lamentable 
thing on the printed page is because it is an attempt 
[308] 



WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

to prove a theory. Moody was a Puritan, through' 
and through, and hke all modern literary Puritans 
he was desperately ashamed of his Puritanism. He 
glorified what he thought to be the pagan ideal, and 
in "The Great Divide" he wanted to show that the 
large acceptances of Ghent were nobler than the 
austere negations of Ruth. But paganism and 
Puritanism are nothing but terms, almost meaning- 
less from much repetition, and "The Great Divide" 
is a play of terms, of sjrmbols, of lay figures. And 
the only things that it proves are Moody's total in- 
ability to understand paganism and his reluctant 
but inevitable sympathy with Puritanism. 

It was his Puritanism that made Moody try to 
stimulate the conscience of his land by means of 
"An Ode in Time of Hesitation," his best sustained 
long poem, and his most passionate utterance. It 
was the Puritan who wrote "On a Soldier Fallen in 
the Philippines." It was the Puritan who wrote 
"The Brute." And I think that it was the Puritan 
who wrote "Gloucester Moors." A pagan, such as 
Moody desired to be, would not have worried about 
the "souls distraught in the hold," nor would he have 
worried over the fact that some of the crew had over- 
eaten. Also, a pagan would have enjoyed the love- 

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FUGITIVE PIECES 

liness of the wild geranium and the barberry with- 
out asking: 

"Who has given to me this sweet, 
And given my brother dust to eat? 
And when will his wage come in?'* 

These things are manifestations of that Puritan 
characteristic knovra as "the New England con- 
science" — the cause in recent years of many rather 
frantic efforts at social and economic and philo- 
sophical readjustment. Mr. John M. JManly says 
that "Gloucester JMoors" is "a favorite poem with 
workers in the slums," — a significant and startling 
observation. 

Moody's Puritanism gives strength to many of 
his poems, but in others it produces strange incon- 
sistencies and evasions. It helped him to write 
"The Brute" — a strong and sincere poem. But it 
caused him to fail ridiculously in "A Dialogue in 
Purgatory," in "Good-Friday Night," and in 
"Song Flower and Poppy." In the second half of 
the last-named poem we come upon the root of the 
matter — JMoody's complete failure to understand 
any religious system, any philosophy of life, more 
warm and comprehensive than his own Puritanism. 
He rebelled against this Puritanism, yet he could 
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WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

not escape it. He sought vaguely after paganism, 
whereas he could no more have been a Bacchic 
reveller than he could have been a Druid. In spite of 
his reading of early French and Italian romances, 
he failed utterly to see the generous glories of 
the Middle Ages, when all that was noble and 
beautiful in paganism was made a part of the rich- 
est civilization the world has yet known. He 
thought of intellectual development and spiritual 
freedom as things beginning about 1517 — and 
naturally this hampered him when he wrote about 
Michael, Raphael, Azaziel, Eve, Jubal, and Cain. 
A longer residence in Italy might have given him 
a more liberal culture and a spiritual philosophy 
generous without being pagan, pure without being 
Puritanical. And therefore the critics who said 
that a poet of promise died in 1910 may have told 
the truth. A broader culture and more extensive 
human sympathies would have enabled this deft art- 
ist in words to give to the world a message of the 
kind it always welcomes — ^to express beautifully the 
beauty that is truth. 



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